


Receiver

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-12
Updated: 2008-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45...I was nine years old."</i> In the wake of the events of "Fresh Blood," Sam and Dean find a hunt: a family whose youngest child has a monster in his closet. The Winchesters know exactly how to deal with monsters, but this hunt is a little too familiar. Sam starts to unravel while Dean's show falters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Written for the spn_j2_bigbang 2008 challenge. This fic refers to fanon events in three of my prior stories, Recoil, Ricochet, and Reload. You don't need to read them to read this. Some readers may recognize portions of Recoil from another pov.
> 
> Massive thanks to marinarusalka for her excellent beta skills and to smilla02 and luzdeestrellas for their terrific input, and to audrarose, estrella30, and wendy for running the challenge.

  
art work by dun

Sam has the covers pulled all the way up to his chin, as if the thin blanket can protect him. The blanket's soft and worn, dotted with a few small holes and coffee stains and it smells like him, like Dad, like Dean. Like stale coffee, the inside of the Impala, popcorn, gunpowder, sweat. Usually they use whatever the motels or furnished apartments have on the beds, but Sam's had this blanket for a while, so faded from washings it's hard to tell what color it was really. It travels with them, folded up and tucked neatly in Sam's backpack.

A truck rumbles past on the nearby highway and his body jerks, fingers tightening around the gun. He knows Dad and Dean are right down the hall, they aren't going to let anything get him. That's what Dean always said. Nothing will get him, not while they're around.

But the creature doesn't come out unless he's alone. It won't come out for Dean, even though he's not a grown-up, not really, although he seems pretty grown up to Sam.

The room's dark, with the flash of an occasional passing headlight sliding the shadows around, and when the closet door starts to open, at first Sam hopes it's another shadow, a trick. The gun's metal is cold against his palm, strange and heavy as he waits, watching the door open wider. He smells wet fur and mud and a scent like a grave.

Claws curl around the edge of the door frame and the dark burn of its eyes fixes on him. Wants him, Sam, specifically. He thinks of Dean sleeping on the floor of his room the past several nights, _shuddup and go to sleep already, will ya?_.

The door opens all the way and the sound of the monster's breathing fills up the room, wraps around him, thick and heavy, bringing with it a stronger stench of earth and a strong, too-sweet smell like rotting raw meat.

The thing's haunches tense like a stalking cat's, eyes fixed on Sam. _Dean,_ Sam thinks -- shouts in his head, wishes. He pulls the gun out from under the covers, holding it in both hands as his finger finds the trigger.

* * *

His own yell woke him. Sam sat up, blinking at the pale dawn light showing through the thin curtains. For a surreal moment, he couldn't remember what part of the country he was in, the dream more real than the motel room, which had been decorated as if it were a tribute to the glory of the color orange. Orange carpet, orange whorls on the wallpaper, orange fixtures, of all conceivable shades. The room made him think of a bowl of sherbet ice cream.

In the other bed, Dean startled, fumbled blindly with the covers, and pulled his gun out from under his pillow. He rolled to his feet, shoulders tense. "Sammy?"

"I'm okay. It was a..." He almost said _nightmare_. "Dream," Sam finished, rubbing his eyes.

Dean sat on the edge of the bed in the blue boxers and white undershirt he'd slept in, handgun pointed down. The side of his neck was faintly red around the healing marks. "A dream," Dean said, flat and unbelieving.

"Just a dream," Sam said. He scooted forward on the bed, put his bare feet down on the scratchy orange shag carpet, and padded towards the bathroom, rolling his shoulders as he went to stretch out his muscles.

He pretended he didn't notice Dean watching him.

The bathroom was cold. He glanced at himself in the mirror, seeing a stranger; his face seemed more angular that it ought to be, and there were lines he'd never had before. Mostly it was his eyes -- he didn't like what he saw behind them. Sam pulled off his t-shirt and sweatpants and stepped into the shower. He tucked his head down, letting the hot water beat onto the back of his neck, his shoulders.

The visions had always been of the future, disjointed, images that flashed against his brain until it felt like his head might split open. This dream was different, linear, the details sharp and ordered. The shower water filled his ears, dulling sound to a peaceful thrum, and uncapping the tiny bottle of motel shampoo drowned the memory of scent.

Rinsing away the suds, Sam scrubbed his palms against his face, then looked down at his hands, at the water splashing off them.

It'd been three days. There was no more blood under his fingernails but he reached for the soap anyway, scrubbed carefully. He stopped, holding the slippery bar of soap in his hands, watching the bubbles slide off his skin.

He imagined Dean snickering -- _Lady Macbeth._ Dean didn't reach much fiction; Sam could count on one hand the number of novels Dean had ever gotten excited about, and that included assigned reading in high school. But Shakespeare was a different matter. _The guy's awesome. All that murder and sex and blood and ghosts? And swordfights, man._

"Yo, Sam, shake a leg!" Dean yelled. As if he felt that wasn't insistent enough, he pounded the door a few times.

"Yeah, in a sec," Sam called back.

"Dude, I gotta pee! And shower!" Dean yelled again.

Sam turned off the water, thinking about how it would be, without Dean bellowing at him through a bathroom door. A heaviness settled into his chest, along with the now familiar stirring of panic. To still it, he allowed himself the luxury of feeling irritated, and deliberately took his time brushing his teeth, towel wrapped around his waist. The steam from the shower fogged and softened his reflection in the mirror.

* * *

Since they'd banished the hu hsien that had been terrorizing the woods of Ohio, they were free to wander where they would, to hunt something new. What, Sam had no idea. He hardly cared, with the turn of the days murmuring _hurry_ in the back of his mind.

Dean bought three newspapers from the machines outside the diner, one city paper, and two local papers. The small papers often yielded better results, but you never knew. Dean said he'd read anything so long as it was printed on paper and told you what was going on, leaving the internet searches to Sam.

It was a Saturday, and the place was packed. The scent of bacon and maple syrup seemed to wrap around Sam as they stepped into the diner, little bell on the door jangling.

"Any empty table, boys." The waitress waved a wiry, thin arm at them.

Dean shrugged out of his leather jacket and folded back one of the local newspapers while Sam opened a menu. It was cold enough outside and warm enough in the diner that the window of their booth was foggy at the edges. He reached out and traced a design in the condensation, not thinking of anything but when he was done it looked like a monster face, zig-zags for teeth and twin dots for eyes. Sam wiped it away with the side of his hand.

"How are we for cash?" Sam asked.

Resting his elbows on the table, Dean leaned forward. "Running low. There's a bunch of bars in the area. Couple of hours hustling pool, we'll be fine."

In the booth across from theirs, a girl around ten or eleven years old with long dark hair pulled back into a pony tail reached across the table and poked a little boy sitting across from her. He poked her back.

"Settle down, guys," said the man with them, presumably their father.

"He's putting _mustard_ on his eggs," the girl said. Her round face screwed up into an expression of disgust.

"So what. I put Tabasco on mine. You put whatever you want on your eggs, Tommy," he told to the boy.

"Yeah, sure, maybe." Sam turned back to the menu.

"Sam, are you..." Dean bit off whatever he was going to ask, kept reading the paper instead.

Sam hoped maybe that would be that, but Dean's glance slid over to him again.

"You just look...I mean, the thing with Gordon. And you know, those dreams you've been having." Dean kept his eyes on the newspaper.

Slouching -- as if that would make Dean notice the circles under his eyes less -- Sam fiddled with the napkin dispenser. "I told you, they're just dreams. That's all."

The back of his mind stirred uneasily. No, this wasn't like before, it wasn't, and besides, Dean carried enough already. Sam had watched the weeks and months eroding Dean, the deal a heavy hand threatening to drag him away. They had problems bigger than nightmares. Sam thought of the pieces of research he'd been worrying at before he'd fallen asleep over della Porta and Galileo.

"I'm fine," Sam added.

"Sure." Dean pursed his lips, like he was trying to look as Zen as possible. "Got it."

At the other booth, the little boy slid off the bench and headed for the bathroom.

"You ready to order?" The waitress returned, a smile softening the briskness of her request.

"Scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries," Dean said. "And coffee."

She wrote his order down. "Anything for you, hon?"

"Same thing."

"Makes my morning easier." She wandered off.

"Here's something." Dean pushed the paper across the table at Sam and tapped a paragraph with his forefinger. "Third time in a month, there's been a bunch of accidents at a construction site for a new mall."

He read the news item. "Dean, it sounds like incompetence."

"C'mon, how incompetent could they be? I think there might be a pattern."

"...every night, Dad. What's wrong with him?" Without meaning to, Sam's ear picked the conversation the girl and her father were having out of the cluttered murmur of the diner.

"Nothing's wrong with him, sweetie. It's a little kid thing."

"But he seems really scared. He wakes up screaming every night."

"What with your...with everything, I think it's normal." The father rubbed his hand over his face.

"Hey," Dean snapped his finger in Sam's face.

"Yeah. Uh. Sounds too much like coincidence." Sam slid the paper back across the table.

"It's worth checking out, though," Dean said. "You google the construction company, I can check the land records, maybe it was a burial ground or a cemetery or something. We do a few sweeps with the EMF..."

In the other booth, the girl tucked her ponytail neatly over her shoulder and folded her hands on the table. "Maybe there really is something in his closet."

Across the table, Dean caught Sam's eye.

"I looked. Every night." The father laid his hand on his daughter's. "Don't start putting more ideas into his head. Or freak out yourself."

"But what if," the girl said, more softly, leaning forward as her father pulled his hand away. Her smooth forehead creased, turning her into eleven going on thirty for a moment.

"Cal, enough. If it keeps up, I'll make an appointment with Dr. Waters."

Pulling a pen out of his jacket pocket, Dean jotted the names down in the margins of a newspaper. The waitress brought their food and they both started to eat quickly.

The little boy returned to the booth to finish eating his eggs with mustard. The family was quiet for a few minutes until the boy jerked in his seat.

"Knock it off!" he yelled, and around the diner, several conversations went silent, adults turning to stare.

The girl grinned across the table at her brother and reached for the salt with an air of exaggerated innocence.

"Guys." The father put his hand to his face. "You're embarrassing me. It's my job to embarrass you, not the other way around."

The boy jumped in his seat again; from across the aisle, Sam had seen the girl's foot shoot out under the booth, kicking him. When the boy glared at her across the table, she shrugged and mouthed _what?_

Dean popped a piece of bacon in his mouth, and smirked. "She's good."

"Yeah, she could give you annoying lessons."

"Hey, everything I know about being annoying, I learned from you." Dean waved another piece of bacon with a flourish, before that went into his mouth and he crunched happily.

When the family finished eating and the father got up to go pay the check, Dean looked up from sprinkling more Tabasco on his eggs and jerked his head towards the parking lot. Sam nodded and slid out of the booth, made a show of stretching his arms and holding his stomach.

"I need some fresh air," he said. "Be right back."

He didn't bother with his coat; the diner was warm and he actually did welcome the sharp, clear air. Cars rushed by on the highway as Sam stood on the sidewalk, the brown of woods set against the blue sky. The father and the two kids brushed past him; the man nodded amiably as Sam stepped out of the way, and Sam smiled faintly back. Just another stranger. He was fairly sure the dad wouldn't be so amiable if he knew Sam watched them walk to their car and then noted the license plate number.

By the time he got back inside, Dean had paid the check. He gave Sam a light shove between his shoulders, out the door and down the steps. His stride was fast and easy headed back towards the car. "Two for one, Sammy," Dean grinned at him across the roof.

"We don't know that either one is a job," Sam said, needing to pull Dean back, make him dial it down a notch. This didn't feel at all the same as the eagerness for the hunt Dean had always worn clean on his sleeve. Or maybe it was. Maybe Dean had always been this way, only now it felt like Dean unspooling, slipping away from him. This was how it'd been for months, not as manic as right after Wyoming, but still Dean going after hunts like the world would run out of ghosts, and picking up girls like there might soon be a shortage of them as well.

What the world faced was an acute shortage of _Dean_.

"You're no fun." Dean opened the driver's side door with a loud creak.

"Most kids are scared of the monster in their closet," Sam said, ducking into the car. "Or under their bed. Even with what we know, sometimes it's just regular kid fears." To his own ears he sounded desperate, and he wondered if Dean could hear it.

The engine started with a roar. "Since when do you think that way?"

Sam shut his eyes a moment, saw a closet door opening slowly, smelled wet fur. He opened his eyes again as Dean pulled out onto the highway. "I don't. I'm just saying."

"Okay, Scully." Dean wrinkled his nose up as if he were smelling something bad; by his expression, he clearly thought Sam had been drinking the wrong kool-aid.

* * *

Back at the hotel, Sam got on the computer and found a name and address to go with the license plate. "Got it. Father's name is Bill Andrews." He glanced up and saw Dean had removed the casing on his EMF meter, the one he'd made from a walkman a few years ago.

Dean had one knee bent, heel of his boot against the comforter. Bits of wire lay scattered on the bed, along with the discarded battery. Lifting the circuit board to eye-level, he squinted at it, then adjusted one of the wires. "So we either go to Dr. Waters and take a peek into the records on a Tommy Andrews, or we go direct to the Andrews house." Dean looked up and noticed Sam watching him. "One of the connections was loose. Look, here." He moved his index finger, then picked up the roll of electrical tape by his boot. "And--" he bit off a piece of tape, his voice going muffled for a second -- "if the connection looks like it won't stay put, you do that."

He put the circuit board down on the ugly orange comforter and made an adjustment with the piece of tape. When he was done, Dean gave the circuit board a smug, fond gaze; he looked as if he would _beam_ if he didn't think it would be dorky.

Sam knew how to use an EMF meter, in theory, the science that made them work, but Dean was the one who cracked the cases open and fiddled with them, repaired them. Transistors and Ohm's and switches existed only as hazy memories of science class. A memory surfaced, from a few years ago, when Sam had mocked Dean for it. It'd been only a little while after they'd started traveling together again, looking for Dad. Sam had never thought the home-made EMF was pathetic; it's just that it was part of that world Dean and Dad belonged to but not Sam, another reminder of the gulf between them. He pushed back the quick twinge of guilt in his chest. That had been a long time ago.

"Nice," Sam said, as Dean held up the repaired meter.

Looking like he was trying not to look pleased, Dean replaced the battery, then snapped the casing back on the meter. "Hey, you know, I did a few construction gigs with Dad while you were at Stanford, I could maybe land a job at that mall site. Get in on the inside."

"Yeah, maybe."

While Dean switched the meter on and went to work adjusting the settings, Sam thought about the rare books stashed in the bottom of his duffel bag. For some of his research, he'd been able to lie and claim it was related to their hunts, but the title of these two were kind of obvious -- Dean would pick out the demonic subject matter right away if he saw him reading either of them. He needed a few hours alone to take notes, itched to be turning pages, deciphering old print; the answer was there, elusive and always on the next page, and if not that book, the one after that. But it was _there_ , and Sam would find it.

Except here was Dean, practically rubbing his hands together with glee, planning infiltrations, and Sam couldn't say no. Not that Sam would turn away from a hunt anyway; there were people to save besides his brother, hundreds of demons they'd let out into the world, dark things to kill.

The hot feel of blood trickling over his fingers, sticky against his palms, came back to him, and Sam clenched his fists. This wasn't who he was, what he wanted to be, but he'd do what had to be done. That's what Dad had always said, wasn't it. _You do what has to get done._ As if it were that simple, as if killing things was no more astounding than taking out the trash or changing a tire in the rain.

The dream tugged at the corners of his mind, the feel of the old blanket, the metal of the gun cold against his skin. "Let's start with the Andrews house," he said.

* * *

"Ironic, huh? The security in that place sucks." Dean threw one of the coveralls at Sam, then began tugging the other one on over his jeans, leaning one hand on a dumpster to keep his balance.

The uniforms were black, with the alarm company logo on the chest. When they were both done, Sam's were too short in the wrist, too high at the ankle, while Dean's sleeves were too long and the legs too baggy.

"Uh, switch?"

"What?" Dean smiled innocently. "Something wrong with your uniform?" He rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves.

"Shut up."

"Expecting a flood?" said Dean.

"Wow, you make that joke up yourself?" Sam tugged at the sleeves, as if that would help, and squirmed.

Dean started to laugh silently, shoulders shaking. He put his lower arm across his mouth, still making no sound, not laughing outright. Sam thought Dean was enjoying this way too much; but he would've stood in the alley all day in that ridiculously too-short uniform if he could get Dean to deliver one real belly laugh. Those had been rare from Dean, even when they were kids, but it would happen sometimes, Dean laughing so hard he rolled onto the floor, eyes tearing. That was gone, not just since the deal, it was since Dad died and the only way his brother seemed to know how to laugh now was like he was afraid to do it too loud. Like something might _hear_ and snatch it out of him.

"Oh, all right, enough with the sad puppy face," Dean said, and began to shrug out of his uniform. "Wuss." He threw the coveralls at Sam.

They hit Sam in the face because he was busy tugging off the too-small ones. "Dork." He stepped out of his own coveralls, threw them hard at Dean.

That felt normal, as normal as their lives ever got.

The Andrews house was a small, two storey split-level with empty flower-boxes mounted outside the bay window and a basketball hoop over the garage door. Dean parked the car across the street and a good quarter of a mile off; the Impala didn't exactly seem like the kind of vehicle two guys from the alarm company would drive, and they'd decided against hot-wiring a van.

They seemed to count a lot on people not noticing things. Sam wondered, sometimes, at people being that gullible and unobservant. Even more so, he wondered that people seemed to trust them, how they responded to the easy smirk and conspiratorial wink Dean had perfected, and believed Sam's quiet voice and sympathies for the death of a loved one. That he usually meant it, that they were there to help, didn't matter. Sam still felt like an intruder into people's lives.

Bobby's seemed like the only place left on earth they'd get entrance without putting on an act, by just showing up as themselves. For a little while, there'd been Harvelle's, but that was gone and Ellen hadn't settled anywhere new yet. They got phone calls from her once in a while, letting them know she and Jo were alive, that there was one less demon to worry about, or to ask for advice on the best way to deal with a basilisk.

He matched Dean's easy stride as they went up the front walk. The grass on the lawn was a healthy green but shaggy, as if it hadn't been cut in a while, and the empty flower boxes appeared to be the only outside decoration, not a stone bird bath or garden gnome in sight. The basketball net was clean and white, relatively new, without a hint of rust on the rim.

Dean went up the cement steps and rang the door bell, while Sam stood up straighter and tried to think like an alarm company technician. After a half a minute or so, the door opened, letting out the sound of a TV going inside, a movie by the sounds of it, with lots of explosions.

The girl from the diner stared at them, one hand on the door frame, the other on her hip. She wore loose-fitting jeans with a lot of pockets and a sweatshirt with a manically grinning rabbit on it and the words _hi dorkwad_ beneath.

"Yes?" She said, with a self-assured tilt to her chin.

"We're from the Clinton Alarm Company. Are your parents here?" Dean said with the smile he used to try to impress people with what a nice, harmless person he was.

"Dad!" The girl leaned her head back into the house, hand still holding the door frame. "Some guys from the alarm company are here to see you," she shouted.

After a moment, the sound on the TV went a few decibels lower and then a man with a friendly, broad face and short, sandy hair appeared behind the girl. "Yes? I don't remember calling for an alarm system."

"You didn't?" Dean made a big thing about looking down at the clipboard. "Have you down right here, William Andrews, 1616 Sycamore, three o'clock."

"No, sorry. I mean, yeah, that's me, but I didn't make an appointment with you guys." The man shrugged, voice polite, but Sam noted the way he rested his hand against his daughter's back, then tugged her gently away from them, into the shadows behind him.

Sam held up his hand. "The office must have made a mistake. It happens. We get a lot of installment requests this time of year, with the holidays coming up..." He trailed off.

Right on cue, Dean hesitated in the midst of turning away, as if a thought had just occurred to him. "You know, with people traveling a lot and all. It might not be a bad idea if we just took a look around. Could give you a free assessment."

"I don't think so."

"Suit yourself, sir," Dean said. "You wouldn't believe the stats on break-ins from Halloween to New Year's."

As Sam started to turn away, the girl tugged at the man's arm. "Dad," she said, low, but loud enough for Sam to hear. "Maybe we should. The noises Tommy heard, maybe...you said. Someone might have been trying to break in."

A look of interested concern came over Dean's face. "You've had some trouble recently?" he said, voice deepening with authority.

"Nah...no, it's...it's nothing. My son, he thought he heard something." The man smiled and shrugged self-deprecatingly. "The other night. Just a nightmare."

"Ah. I hear ya, my sister's kids, they get night terrors all the time." Dean barked a laugh. "Little one's convinced there's a monster under the bed."

There was definitely a response to that, a twitch in the man's face and a shadow of worry. "Let me see some I.D.," he said, holding out his hand. He was about Dean's height. His arm looked well-muscled -- he probably worked out a few times a week at a gym or with weights in his basement.

They pulled out their faked company badges. Bill Andrews studied both of them while his daughter peered over his arm. She looked from the fuzzy ID pictures to Sam's face, then Dean's, with more cynicism than her father. But she said nothing as Mr. Andrews handed the badges back.

"Can't hurt, I guess," he said, and stepped back, opening the door wider. "The house is a mess, sorry about that, we're a week behind on laundry. Watch your step. Hey, Tommy," he called out, and stopped in the entry to the family room, where the flicker of a movie played over a boy slouched on the couch. The curtains were drawn and there was a half-devoured bowl of popcorn on the cushions beside him, with more popcorn scattered on the floor.

The kid looked up slowly, blinking. Sam remembered that feeling, of having to pull himself out of the imaginary world on the TV screen, back to drab motel rooms, spaghettios, the uncertainty and boredom of wondering when Dad would get back and the surety of Dean, who'd been more in color, fascinating, and at moments annoying than anything the TV screen could produce.

"Kiddo, these men are here to see if we need an alarm system. Can you pause the movie and help me and Cal out?"

Tommy shoved his dark hair out of his eyes, sat up straight, and hit a button on the remote. The noise on the TV stopped. Then the kid hopped off the couch, ran at his father, and jumped on his back. Mr. Andrews caught his legs; they'd done that maneuver a hundred times, easy.

"Gotcha," he said.

Sam looked at Dean, and saw the distant look come into his eyes, an expression that made Sam hurt. It was gone in a second and Dean was following Mr. Andrews down the hall, towards the dining room.

"Anyone ever try to break in?" Dean asked. "Hear any weird noises at night, that kind of thing?"

"Not that I know of."

His daughter opened her mouth but Mr. Andrews loosened one hand from Tommy's ankle and touched the top of her head gently. She stayed silent.

"Good," said Dean. "That's good. But let me tell you about our system. We not only wire up your windows and doors, we put motion detectors in the front and back yard."

They went through the dining room -- which looked like it was used more for storage than eating, boxes stacked in the corner and dust on the table top -- and into the kitchen, a large, room with big windows overlooking a cheerfully overgrown back yard. A tire swing hung from a stout tree branch.

Sam stumbled, and a basketball went rolling across the clean floor tiles. Bending, Cal scooped it up. She stood off to the side, watching as Dean started to explain how they'd wire up the windows and doors. Cal began to dribble the ball, making a steady _thump-thump_.

"Cal, what did I say about doing that indoors? Or did you decide to develop selective deafness last time we had this chat?" Mr. Andrews slid Tommy down off his back and gave his daughter an exasperated look.

"Yeah, okay." She stopped dribbling and instead held up her hand, balanced the ball on her index finger, and gave it a spin.

That went on for thirty-five seconds or so before she faltered and caught the ball with her other hand.

"Not bad," Dean said.

Cal lowered her head, tucking her dark hair behind her ear, then started spinning the basketball again, hand steady. "I can do it for two and a half minutes, easy. Just not all the time."

Mr. Andrews led them back down the hall and then up the stairs, past pictures hanging on the walls. They were of Cal and Tommy, Sam assumed, as infants, as toddlers, with ice-cream smeared on their faces, or in bathing suits or blowing out birthday cake candles. In a few of them there was a beautiful dark-haired woman, but only in the shots with all four of them together, or her alone with one or both of the children. Mr. Andrews wasn't wearing a wedding ring, but now that Sam looked close, he saw the paler skin at the base of his finger, the indentation where a ring used to rest. Sam wondered, but didn't ask.

There wasn't much point in taking an EMF reading in Mr. Andrews' room, but Sam did anyway, using the ear-buds while Dean kept the family distracted with some invented techno-babble and made-up home break-in statistics.

Hardly a blip there, just the usual interference from the TV. He made an adjustment, and glanced up to see Tommy staring, eyes fixed on the EMF meter. Sam acted the way he thought someone from the alarm company would act: he winked, trying to hold the EMF as if it was just another ordinary tool of the trade. Which it was, really.

In Cal's room -- white-painted book shelves filled with books arranged in neat alphabetical order by author, floral comforter on the bed, bright-colored braided rug on the floor -- the EMF reading jumped a little near the closet. Not enough to be anything, but enough that it could be.

"So...you said something about your son hearing noises...?" Dean said.

"In his room." Cal dropped the basketball in the corner next to a hockey stick and a well-worn baseball glove, and folded her arms.

"Maybe it was someone trying to break in," Mr. Andrews said. "God." He rubbed his hand over his face, as if that would remove the shadows under his eyes.

"Let's go check it out," Dean said.

Tommy's room was right next to Cal's, the same size and shape. But where Cal's was neat, Tommy's was a jumble of toys. No, not toys, _projects_ , Sam thought. What had to be three erector sets assembled into an elaborate structure sat on the floor. A Rube Goldberg-type device made of popsicle sticks, rubber bands, balsa wood, and what looked like plastic parts scavenged from other toys sat on a child-sized table. There were electronic parts on the table as well, to build what, Sam had no idea, but among them was a potato stuck in a plastic cup, with wires sticking out of it.

Sam carefully picked his way over to the window, trying to hold the EMF without being too noticeable. The meter measured a low-level reading, but as he turned, it spiked.

He glanced at Dean, and Dean nodded -- the meter was aimed at the closet. The door was closed, a pile of aluminum cans stacked to one side.

"It's in my closet," Tommy said, and Sam realized it was the first thing he'd said during the tour of the house. "I made an alarm. Want to see?"

"Tommy, no, these men don't want to--" Mr. Andrews moved forward, reaching for his son, but Tommy was already untangling the aluminum cans, which Sam now saw were glued onto a string.

The boy straightened out the string, the cans clanking. One end of the string was tied around a nail jutting from the wall. The other end Tommy tied around the back of a chair, so that the cans stretched across the closet door.

"If it tries to get out, I can hear it." He looked up at Dean. "Don't need another alarm."

Mr. Andrews picked up his son while the lights on the EMF lit up and the device squealed loud in Sam's ear. He tugged out the earbud and glanced at Dean again.

"Well, we should be able to wire up these windows for you pretty easy, Mr. Andrews," Dean said loudly, as if nothing had happened. "Low installation fee and not a big monthly payment for the service, we've got people watching the grid twenty-four seven so if..."

"I'll think about it."

"Sure. You call us when you're ready."

As Sam followed Mr. Andrews out of the room, Tommy met Sam's gaze over his father's shoulder. The kid had green eyes, true green, not hazel, and they looked at Sam wide and silent, as if expecting...he didn't know what. It wasn't a plea, but Sam recognized the fear buried behind them and for a moment had the uneasy feeling the boy could see into his head, knew about his nightmares.

"Well, Scully?" Dean stood in the middle of the quiet street, turning to look back at the house. He squinted, the sun on his face. "Is it little green men or just a vast government conspiracy to conceal the existence of bizarre mutant experiments?"

"EMF says there's something there."

"Damn straight." Dean nodded with satisfaction. "I'd say we're goin' monster slaying." He stepped up on the sidewalk and started walking towards the car.

"And how exactly are we going to get in to do the slaying? The father wasn't exactly eager for us to be there, I can imagine how he'd feel if we broke into his house in the middle of the night."

"We can watch the place, do a stake-out. Also, if that kid so much as sneezes--" Dean pulled a small monitor out of the pocket of his coveralls.

Sam stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. "Dean, you didn't."

"Hid it behind some books. Range on this puppy is up to 800 feet. We hide out in the back yard tonight. We'll hear anything going on in his room."

"Until we get arrested."

"Killjoy."

  


  


artwork by [](http://dun.livejournal.com/profile)[**dun**](http://dun.livejournal.com/)  


  


  
[Part 2](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/146767.html)   



	2. Chapter 2

Sam has the covers pulled all the way up to his chin, as if the thin blanket can protect him. The blanket's soft and worn, dotted with a few small holes and coffee stains and it smells like him, like Dad, like Dean. Like stale coffee, the inside of the Impala, popcorn, gunpowder, sweat. Usually they use whatever the motels or furnished apartments have on the beds, but Sam's had this blanket for a while, so faded from washings it's hard to tell what color it was really. It travels with them, folded up and tucked neatly in Sam's backpack.

A truck rumbles past on the nearby highway and his body jerks, fingers tightening around the gun. He knows Dad and Dean are right down the hall, they aren't going to let anything get him. That's what Dean always said. Nothing will get him, not while they're around.

But the creature doesn't come out unless he's alone. It won't come out for Dean, even though he's not a grown-up, not really, although he seems pretty grown up to Sam.

The room's dark, with the flash of an occasional passing headlight sliding the shadows around, and when the closet door starts to open, at first Sam hopes it's another shadow, a trick. The gun's metal is cold against his palm, strange and heavy as he waits, watching the door open wider. He smells wet fur and mud and a scent like a grave.

Claws curl around the edge of the door frame and the dark burn of its eyes fixes on him. Wants him, Sam, specifically. He thinks of Dean sleeping on the floor of his room the past several nights, _shuddup and go to sleep already, will ya?_.

The door opens all the way and the sound of the monster's breathing fills up the room, wraps around him, thick and heavy, bringing with it a stronger stench of earth and a strong, too-sweet smell like rotting raw meat.

The thing's haunches tense like a stalking cat's, eyes fixed on Sam. _Dean,_ Sam thinks -- shouts in his head, wishes. He pulls the gun out from under the covers, holding it in both hands as his finger finds the trigger.

* * *

His own yell woke him. Sam sat up, blinking at the pale dawn light showing through the thin curtains. For a surreal moment, he couldn't remember what part of the country he was in, the dream more real than the motel room, which had been decorated as if it were a tribute to the glory of the color orange. Orange carpet, orange whorls on the wallpaper, orange fixtures, of all conceivable shades. The room made him think of a bowl of sherbet ice cream.

In the other bed, Dean startled, fumbled blindly with the covers, and pulled his gun out from under his pillow. He rolled to his feet, shoulders tense. "Sammy?"

"I'm okay. It was a..." He almost said _nightmare_. "Dream," Sam finished, rubbing his eyes.

Dean sat on the edge of the bed in the blue boxers and white undershirt he'd slept in, handgun pointed down. The side of his neck was faintly red around the healing marks. "A dream," Dean said, flat and unbelieving.

"Just a dream," Sam said. He scooted forward on the bed, put his bare feet down on the scratchy orange shag carpet, and padded towards the bathroom, rolling his shoulders as he went to stretch out his muscles.

He pretended he didn't notice Dean watching him.

The bathroom was cold. He glanced at himself in the mirror, seeing a stranger; his face seemed more angular that it ought to be, and there were lines he'd never had before. Mostly it was his eyes -- he didn't like what he saw behind them. Sam pulled off his t-shirt and sweatpants and stepped into the shower. He tucked his head down, letting the hot water beat onto the back of his neck, his shoulders.

The visions had always been of the future, disjointed, images that flashed against his brain until it felt like his head might split open. This dream was different, linear, the details sharp and ordered. The shower water filled his ears, dulling sound to a peaceful thrum, and uncapping the tiny bottle of motel shampoo drowned the memory of scent.

Rinsing away the suds, Sam scrubbed his palms against his face, then looked down at his hands, at the water splashing off them.

It'd been three days. There was no more blood under his fingernails but he reached for the soap anyway, scrubbed carefully. He stopped, holding the slippery bar of soap in his hands, watching the bubbles slide off his skin.

He imagined Dean snickering -- _Lady Macbeth._ Dean didn't reach much fiction; Sam could count on one hand the number of novels Dean had ever gotten excited about, and that included assigned reading in high school. But Shakespeare was a different matter. _The guy's awesome. All that murder and sex and blood and ghosts? And swordfights, man._

"Yo, Sam, shake a leg!" Dean yelled. As if he felt that wasn't insistent enough, he pounded the door a few times.

"Yeah, in a sec," Sam called back.

"Dude, I gotta pee! And shower!" Dean yelled again.

Sam turned off the water, thinking about how it would be, without Dean bellowing at him through a bathroom door. A heaviness settled into his chest, along with the now familiar stirring of panic. To still it, he allowed himself the luxury of feeling irritated, and deliberately took his time brushing his teeth, towel wrapped around his waist. The steam from the shower fogged and softened his reflection in the mirror.

* * *

Since they'd banished the hu hsien that had been terrorizing the woods of Ohio, they were free to wander where they would, to hunt something new. What, Sam had no idea. He hardly cared, with the turn of the days murmuring _hurry_ in the back of his mind.

Dean bought three newspapers from the machines outside the diner, one city paper, and two local papers. The small papers often yielded better results, but you never knew. Dean said he'd read anything so long as it was printed on paper and told you what was going on, leaving the internet searches to Sam.

It was a Saturday, and the place was packed. The scent of bacon and maple syrup seemed to wrap around Sam as they stepped into the diner, little bell on the door jangling.

"Any empty table, boys." The waitress waved a wiry, thin arm at them.

Dean shrugged out of his leather jacket and folded back one of the local newspapers while Sam opened a menu. It was cold enough outside and warm enough in the diner that the window of their booth was foggy at the edges. He reached out and traced a design in the condensation, not thinking of anything but when he was done it looked like a monster face, zig-zags for teeth and twin dots for eyes. Sam wiped it away with the side of his hand.

"How are we for cash?" Sam asked.

Resting his elbows on the table, Dean leaned forward. "Running low. There's a bunch of bars in the area. Couple of hours hustling pool, we'll be fine."

In the booth across from theirs, a girl around ten or eleven years old with long dark hair pulled back into a pony tail reached across the table and poked a little boy sitting across from her. He poked her back.

"Settle down, guys," said the man with them, presumably their father.

"He's putting _mustard_ on his eggs," the girl said. Her round face screwed up into an expression of disgust.

"So what. I put Tabasco on mine. You put whatever you want on your eggs, Tommy," he told to the boy.

"Yeah, sure, maybe." Sam turned back to the menu.

"Sam, are you..." Dean bit off whatever he was going to ask, kept reading the paper instead.

Sam hoped maybe that would be that, but Dean's glance slid over to him again.

"You just look...I mean, the thing with Gordon. And you know, those dreams you've been having." Dean kept his eyes on the newspaper.

Slouching -- as if that would make Dean notice the circles under his eyes less -- Sam fiddled with the napkin dispenser. "I told you, they're just dreams. That's all."

The back of his mind stirred uneasily. No, this wasn't like before, it wasn't, and besides, Dean carried enough already. Sam had watched the weeks and months eroding Dean, the deal a heavy hand threatening to drag him away. They had problems bigger than nightmares. Sam thought of the pieces of research he'd been worrying at before he'd fallen asleep over della Porta and Galileo.

"I'm fine," Sam added.

"Sure." Dean pursed his lips, like he was trying to look as Zen as possible. "Got it."

At the other booth, the little boy slid off the bench and headed for the bathroom.

"You ready to order?" The waitress returned, a smile softening the briskness of her request.

"Scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries," Dean said. "And coffee."

She wrote his order down. "Anything for you, hon?"

"Same thing."

"Makes my morning easier." She wandered off.

"Here's something." Dean pushed the paper across the table at Sam and tapped a paragraph with his forefinger. "Third time in a month, there's been a bunch of accidents at a construction site for a new mall."

He read the news item. "Dean, it sounds like incompetence."

"C'mon, how incompetent could they be? I think there might be a pattern."

"...every night, Dad. What's wrong with him?" Without meaning to, Sam's ear picked the conversation the girl and her father were having out of the cluttered murmur of the diner.

"Nothing's wrong with him, sweetie. It's a little kid thing."

"But he seems really scared. He wakes up screaming every night."

"What with your...with everything, I think it's normal." The father rubbed his hand over his face.

"Hey," Dean snapped his finger in Sam's face.

"Yeah. Uh. Sounds too much like coincidence." Sam slid the paper back across the table.

"It's worth checking out, though," Dean said. "You google the construction company, I can check the land records, maybe it was a burial ground or a cemetery or something. We do a few sweeps with the EMF..."

In the other booth, the girl tucked her ponytail neatly over her shoulder and folded her hands on the table. "Maybe there really is something in his closet."

Across the table, Dean caught Sam's eye.

"I looked. Every night." The father laid his hand on his daughter's. "Don't start putting more ideas into his head. Or freak out yourself."

"But what if," the girl said, more softly, leaning forward as her father pulled his hand away. Her smooth forehead creased, turning her into eleven going on thirty for a moment.

"Cal, enough. If it keeps up, I'll make an appointment with Dr. Waters."

Pulling a pen out of his jacket pocket, Dean jotted the names down in the margins of a newspaper. The waitress brought their food and they both started to eat quickly.

The little boy returned to the booth to finish eating his eggs with mustard. The family was quiet for a few minutes until the boy jerked in his seat.

"Knock it off!" he yelled, and around the diner, several conversations went silent, adults turning to stare.

The girl grinned across the table at her brother and reached for the salt with an air of exaggerated innocence.

"Guys." The father put his hand to his face. "You're embarrassing me. It's my job to embarrass you, not the other way around."

The boy jumped in his seat again; from across the aisle, Sam had seen the girl's foot shoot out under the booth, kicking him. When the boy glared at her across the table, she shrugged and mouthed _what?_

Dean popped a piece of bacon in his mouth, and smirked. "She's good."

"Yeah, she could give you annoying lessons."

"Hey, everything I know about being annoying, I learned from you." Dean waved another piece of bacon with a flourish, before that went into his mouth and he crunched happily.

When the family finished eating and the father got up to go pay the check, Dean looked up from sprinkling more Tabasco on his eggs and jerked his head towards the parking lot. Sam nodded and slid out of the booth, made a show of stretching his arms and holding his stomach.

"I need some fresh air," he said. "Be right back."

He didn't bother with his coat; the diner was warm and he actually did welcome the sharp, clear air. Cars rushed by on the highway as Sam stood on the sidewalk, the brown of woods set against the blue sky. The father and the two kids brushed past him; the man nodded amiably as Sam stepped out of the way, and Sam smiled faintly back. Just another stranger. He was fairly sure the dad wouldn't be so amiable if he knew Sam watched them walk to their car and then noted the license plate number.

By the time he got back inside, Dean had paid the check. He gave Sam a light shove between his shoulders, out the door and down the steps. His stride was fast and easy headed back towards the car. "Two for one, Sammy," Dean grinned at him across the roof.

"We don't know that either one is a job," Sam said, needing to pull Dean back, make him dial it down a notch. This didn't feel at all the same as the eagerness for the hunt Dean had always worn clean on his sleeve. Or maybe it was. Maybe Dean had always been this way, only now it felt like Dean unspooling, slipping away from him. This was how it'd been for months, not as manic as right after Wyoming, but still Dean going after hunts like the world would run out of ghosts, and picking up girls like there might soon be a shortage of them as well.

What the world faced was an acute shortage of _Dean_.

"You're no fun." Dean opened the driver's side door with a loud creak.

"Most kids are scared of the monster in their closet," Sam said, ducking into the car. "Or under their bed. Even with what we know, sometimes it's just regular kid fears." To his own ears he sounded desperate, and he wondered if Dean could hear it.

The engine started with a roar. "Since when do you think that way?"

Sam shut his eyes a moment, saw a closet door opening slowly, smelled wet fur. He opened his eyes again as Dean pulled out onto the highway. "I don't. I'm just saying."

"Okay, Scully." Dean wrinkled his nose up as if he were smelling something bad; by his expression, he clearly thought Sam had been drinking the wrong kool-aid.

* * *

Back at the hotel, Sam got on the computer and found a name and address to go with the license plate. "Got it. Father's name is Bill Andrews." He glanced up and saw Dean had removed the casing on his EMF meter, the one he'd made from a walkman a few years ago.

Dean had one knee bent, heel of his boot against the comforter. Bits of wire lay scattered on the bed, along with the discarded battery. Lifting the circuit board to eye-level, he squinted at it, then adjusted one of the wires. "So we either go to Dr. Waters and take a peek into the records on a Tommy Andrews, or we go direct to the Andrews house." Dean looked up and noticed Sam watching him. "One of the connections was loose. Look, here." He moved his index finger, then picked up the roll of electrical tape by his boot. "And--" he bit off a piece of tape, his voice going muffled for a second -- "if the connection looks like it won't stay put, you do that."

He put the circuit board down on the ugly orange comforter and made an adjustment with the piece of tape. When he was done, Dean gave the circuit board a smug, fond gaze; he looked as if he would _beam_ if he didn't think it would be dorky.

Sam knew how to use an EMF meter, in theory, the science that made them work, but Dean was the one who cracked the cases open and fiddled with them, repaired them. Transistors and Ohm's and switches existed only as hazy memories of science class. A memory surfaced, from a few years ago, when Sam had mocked Dean for it. It'd been only a little while after they'd started traveling together again, looking for Dad. Sam had never thought the home-made EMF was pathetic; it's just that it was part of that world Dean and Dad belonged to but not Sam, another reminder of the gulf between them. He pushed back the quick twinge of guilt in his chest. That had been a long time ago.

"Nice," Sam said, as Dean held up the repaired meter.

Looking like he was trying not to look pleased, Dean replaced the battery, then snapped the casing back on the meter. "Hey, you know, I did a few construction gigs with Dad while you were at Stanford, I could maybe land a job at that mall site. Get in on the inside."

"Yeah, maybe."

While Dean switched the meter on and went to work adjusting the settings, Sam thought about the rare books stashed in the bottom of his duffel bag. For some of his research, he'd been able to lie and claim it was related to their hunts, but the title of these two were kind of obvious -- Dean would pick out the demonic subject matter right away if he saw him reading either of them. He needed a few hours alone to take notes, itched to be turning pages, deciphering old print; the answer was there, elusive and always on the next page, and if not that book, the one after that. But it was _there_ , and Sam would find it.

Except here was Dean, practically rubbing his hands together with glee, planning infiltrations, and Sam couldn't say no. Not that Sam would turn away from a hunt anyway; there were people to save besides his brother, hundreds of demons they'd let out into the world, dark things to kill.

The hot feel of blood trickling over his fingers, sticky against his palms, came back to him, and Sam clenched his fists. This wasn't who he was, what he wanted to be, but he'd do what had to be done. That's what Dad had always said, wasn't it. _You do what has to get done._ As if it were that simple, as if killing things was no more astounding than taking out the trash or changing a tire in the rain.

The dream tugged at the corners of his mind, the feel of the old blanket, the metal of the gun cold against his skin. "Let's start with the Andrews house," he said.

* * *

"Ironic, huh? The security in that place sucks." Dean threw one of the coveralls at Sam, then began tugging the other one on over his jeans, leaning one hand on a dumpster to keep his balance.

The uniforms were black, with the alarm company logo on the chest. When they were both done, Sam's were too short in the wrist, too high at the ankle, while Dean's sleeves were too long and the legs too baggy.

"Uh, switch?"

"What?" Dean smiled innocently. "Something wrong with your uniform?" He rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves.

"Shut up."

"Expecting a flood?" said Dean.

"Wow, you make that joke up yourself?" Sam tugged at the sleeves, as if that would help, and squirmed.

Dean started to laugh silently, shoulders shaking. He put his lower arm across his mouth, still making no sound, not laughing outright. Sam thought Dean was enjoying this way too much; but he would've stood in the alley all day in that ridiculously too-short uniform if he could get Dean to deliver one real belly laugh. Those had been rare from Dean, even when they were kids, but it would happen sometimes, Dean laughing so hard he rolled onto the floor, eyes tearing. That was gone, not just since the deal, it was since Dad died and the only way his brother seemed to know how to laugh now was like he was afraid to do it too loud. Like something might _hear_ and snatch it out of him.

"Oh, all right, enough with the sad puppy face," Dean said, and began to shrug out of his uniform. "Wuss." He threw the coveralls at Sam.

They hit Sam in the face because he was busy tugging off the too-small ones. "Dork." He stepped out of his own coveralls, threw them hard at Dean.

That felt normal, as normal as their lives ever got.

The Andrews house was a small, two storey split-level with empty flower-boxes mounted outside the bay window and a basketball hoop over the garage door. Dean parked the car across the street and a good quarter of a mile off; the Impala didn't exactly seem like the kind of vehicle two guys from the alarm company would drive, and they'd decided against hot-wiring a van.

They seemed to count a lot on people not noticing things. Sam wondered, sometimes, at people being that gullible and unobservant. Even more so, he wondered that people seemed to trust them, how they responded to the easy smirk and conspiratorial wink Dean had perfected, and believed Sam's quiet voice and sympathies for the death of a loved one. That he usually meant it, that they were there to help, didn't matter. Sam still felt like an intruder into people's lives.

Bobby's seemed like the only place left on earth they'd get entrance without putting on an act, by just showing up as themselves. For a little while, there'd been Harvelle's, but that was gone and Ellen hadn't settled anywhere new yet. They got phone calls from her once in a while, letting them know she and Jo were alive, that there was one less demon to worry about, or to ask for advice on the best way to deal with a basilisk.

He matched Dean's easy stride as they went up the front walk. The grass on the lawn was a healthy green but shaggy, as if it hadn't been cut in a while, and the empty flower boxes appeared to be the only outside decoration, not a stone bird bath or garden gnome in sight. The basketball net was clean and white, relatively new, without a hint of rust on the rim.

Dean went up the cement steps and rang the door bell, while Sam stood up straighter and tried to think like an alarm company technician. After a half a minute or so, the door opened, letting out the sound of a TV going inside, a movie by the sounds of it, with lots of explosions.

The girl from the diner stared at them, one hand on the door frame, the other on her hip. She wore loose-fitting jeans with a lot of pockets and a sweatshirt with a manically grinning rabbit on it and the words _hi dorkwad_ beneath.

"Yes?" She said, with a self-assured tilt to her chin.

"We're from the Clinton Alarm Company. Are your parents here?" Dean said with the smile he used to try to impress people with what a nice, harmless person he was.

"Dad!" The girl leaned her head back into the house, hand still holding the door frame. "Some guys from the alarm company are here to see you," she shouted.

After a moment, the sound on the TV went a few decibels lower and then a man with a friendly, broad face and short, sandy hair appeared behind the girl. "Yes? I don't remember calling for an alarm system."

"You didn't?" Dean made a big thing about looking down at the clipboard. "Have you down right here, William Andrews, 1616 Sycamore, three o'clock."

"No, sorry. I mean, yeah, that's me, but I didn't make an appointment with you guys." The man shrugged, voice polite, but Sam noted the way he rested his hand against his daughter's back, then tugged her gently away from them, into the shadows behind him.

Sam held up his hand. "The office must have made a mistake. It happens. We get a lot of installment requests this time of year, with the holidays coming up..." He trailed off.

Right on cue, Dean hesitated in the midst of turning away, as if a thought had just occurred to him. "You know, with people traveling a lot and all. It might not be a bad idea if we just took a look around. Could give you a free assessment."

"I don't think so."

"Suit yourself, sir," Dean said. "You wouldn't believe the stats on break-ins from Halloween to New Year's."

As Sam started to turn away, the girl tugged at the man's arm. "Dad," she said, low, but loud enough for Sam to hear. "Maybe we should. The noises Tommy heard, maybe...you said. Someone might have been trying to break in."

A look of interested concern came over Dean's face. "You've had some trouble recently?" he said, voice deepening with authority.

"Nah...no, it's...it's nothing. My son, he thought he heard something." The man smiled and shrugged self-deprecatingly. "The other night. Just a nightmare."

"Ah. I hear ya, my sister's kids, they get night terrors all the time." Dean barked a laugh. "Little one's convinced there's a monster under the bed."

There was definitely a response to that, a twitch in the man's face and a shadow of worry. "Let me see some I.D.," he said, holding out his hand. He was about Dean's height. His arm looked well-muscled -- he probably worked out a few times a week at a gym or with weights in his basement.

They pulled out their faked company badges. Bill Andrews studied both of them while his daughter peered over his arm. She looked from the fuzzy ID pictures to Sam's face, then Dean's, with more cynicism than her father. But she said nothing as Mr. Andrews handed the badges back.

"Can't hurt, I guess," he said, and stepped back, opening the door wider. "The house is a mess, sorry about that, we're a week behind on laundry. Watch your step. Hey, Tommy," he called out, and stopped in the entry to the family room, where the flicker of a movie played over a boy slouched on the couch. The curtains were drawn and there was a half-devoured bowl of popcorn on the cushions beside him, with more popcorn scattered on the floor.

The kid looked up slowly, blinking. Sam remembered that feeling, of having to pull himself out of the imaginary world on the TV screen, back to drab motel rooms, spaghettios, the uncertainty and boredom of wondering when Dad would get back and the surety of Dean, who'd been more in color, fascinating, and at moments annoying than anything the TV screen could produce.

"Kiddo, these men are here to see if we need an alarm system. Can you pause the movie and help me and Cal out?"

Tommy shoved his dark hair out of his eyes, sat up straight, and hit a button on the remote. The noise on the TV stopped. Then the kid hopped off the couch, ran at his father, and jumped on his back. Mr. Andrews caught his legs; they'd done that maneuver a hundred times, easy.

"Gotcha," he said.

Sam looked at Dean, and saw the distant look come into his eyes, an expression that made Sam hurt. It was gone in a second and Dean was following Mr. Andrews down the hall, towards the dining room.

"Anyone ever try to break in?" Dean asked. "Hear any weird noises at night, that kind of thing?"

"Not that I know of."

His daughter opened her mouth but Mr. Andrews loosened one hand from Tommy's ankle and touched the top of her head gently. She stayed silent.

"Good," said Dean. "That's good. But let me tell you about our system. We not only wire up your windows and doors, we put motion detectors in the front and back yard."

They went through the dining room -- which looked like it was used more for storage than eating, boxes stacked in the corner and dust on the table top -- and into the kitchen, a large, room with big windows overlooking a cheerfully overgrown back yard. A tire swing hung from a stout tree branch.

Sam stumbled, and a basketball went rolling across the clean floor tiles. Bending, Cal scooped it up. She stood off to the side, watching as Dean started to explain how they'd wire up the windows and doors. Cal began to dribble the ball, making a steady _thump-thump_.

"Cal, what did I say about doing that indoors? Or did you decide to develop selective deafness last time we had this chat?" Mr. Andrews slid Tommy down off his back and gave his daughter an exasperated look.

"Yeah, okay." She stopped dribbling and instead held up her hand, balanced the ball on her index finger, and gave it a spin.

That went on for thirty-five seconds or so before she faltered and caught the ball with her other hand.

"Not bad," Dean said.

Cal lowered her head, tucking her dark hair behind her ear, then started spinning the basketball again, hand steady. "I can do it for two and a half minutes, easy. Just not all the time."

Mr. Andrews led them back down the hall and then up the stairs, past pictures hanging on the walls. They were of Cal and Tommy, Sam assumed, as infants, as toddlers, with ice-cream smeared on their faces, or in bathing suits or blowing out birthday cake candles. In a few of them there was a beautiful dark-haired woman, but only in the shots with all four of them together, or her alone with one or both of the children. Mr. Andrews wasn't wearing a wedding ring, but now that Sam looked close, he saw the paler skin at the base of his finger, the indentation where a ring used to rest. Sam wondered, but didn't ask.

There wasn't much point in taking an EMF reading in Mr. Andrews' room, but Sam did anyway, using the ear-buds while Dean kept the family distracted with some invented techno-babble and made-up home break-in statistics.

Hardly a blip there, just the usual interference from the TV. He made an adjustment, and glanced up to see Tommy staring, eyes fixed on the EMF meter. Sam acted the way he thought someone from the alarm company would act: he winked, trying to hold the EMF as if it was just another ordinary tool of the trade. Which it was, really.

In Cal's room -- white-painted book shelves filled with books arranged in neat alphabetical order by author, floral comforter on the bed, bright-colored braided rug on the floor -- the EMF reading jumped a little near the closet. Not enough to be anything, but enough that it could be.

"So...you said something about your son hearing noises...?" Dean said.

"In his room." Cal dropped the basketball in the corner next to a hockey stick and a well-worn baseball glove, and folded her arms.

"Maybe it was someone trying to break in," Mr. Andrews said. "God." He rubbed his hand over his face, as if that would remove the shadows under his eyes.

"Let's go check it out," Dean said.

Tommy's room was right next to Cal's, the same size and shape. But where Cal's was neat, Tommy's was a jumble of toys. No, not toys, _projects_ , Sam thought. What had to be three erector sets assembled into an elaborate structure sat on the floor. A Rube Goldberg-type device made of popsicle sticks, rubber bands, balsa wood, and what looked like plastic parts scavenged from other toys sat on a child-sized table. There were electronic parts on the table as well, to build what, Sam had no idea, but among them was a potato stuck in a plastic cup, with wires sticking out of it.

Sam carefully picked his way over to the window, trying to hold the EMF without being too noticeable. The meter measured a low-level reading, but as he turned, it spiked.

He glanced at Dean, and Dean nodded -- the meter was aimed at the closet. The door was closed, a pile of aluminum cans stacked to one side.

"It's in my closet," Tommy said, and Sam realized it was the first thing he'd said during the tour of the house. "I made an alarm. Want to see?"

"Tommy, no, these men don't want to--" Mr. Andrews moved forward, reaching for his son, but Tommy was already untangling the aluminum cans, which Sam now saw were glued onto a string.

The boy straightened out the string, the cans clanking. One end of the string was tied around a nail jutting from the wall. The other end Tommy tied around the back of a chair, so that the cans stretched across the closet door.

"If it tries to get out, I can hear it." He looked up at Dean. "Don't need another alarm."

Mr. Andrews picked up his son while the lights on the EMF lit up and the device squealed loud in Sam's ear. He tugged out the earbud and glanced at Dean again.

"Well, we should be able to wire up these windows for you pretty easy, Mr. Andrews," Dean said loudly, as if nothing had happened. "Low installation fee and not a big monthly payment for the service, we've got people watching the grid twenty-four seven so if..."

"I'll think about it."

"Sure. You call us when you're ready."

As Sam followed Mr. Andrews out of the room, Tommy met Sam's gaze over his father's shoulder. The kid had green eyes, true green, not hazel, and they looked at Sam wide and silent, as if expecting...he didn't know what. It wasn't a plea, but Sam recognized the fear buried behind them and for a moment had the uneasy feeling the boy could see into his head, knew about his nightmares.

"Well, Scully?" Dean stood in the middle of the quiet street, turning to look back at the house. He squinted, the sun on his face. "Is it little green men or just a vast government conspiracy to conceal the existence of bizarre mutant experiments?"

"EMF says there's something there."

"Damn straight." Dean nodded with satisfaction. "I'd say we're goin' monster slaying." He stepped up on the sidewalk and started walking towards the car.

"And how exactly are we going to get in to do the slaying? The father wasn't exactly eager for us to be there, I can imagine how he'd feel if we broke into his house in the middle of the night."

"We can watch the place, do a stake-out. Also, if that kid so much as sneezes--" Dean pulled a small monitor out of the pocket of his coveralls.

Sam stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. "Dean, you didn't."

"Hid it behind some books. Range on this puppy is up to 800 feet. We hide out in the back yard tonight. We'll hear anything going on in his room."

"Until we get arrested."

"Killjoy."

  


  


artwork by [](http://dun.livejournal.com/profile)[**dun**](http://dun.livejournal.com/)  


  


  
[Part 2](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/146767.html)   



	3. Receiver

Sometimes Dean hated his job.

More and more lately, if he was honest about it but Dean would rather not think about that because hey, he only had so much time left and hunting was still a kick. Not as good as sex but better than Metallica cranked up loud on the radio while he did eighty on an empty highway.

The fold-out bed in the guest room was about average as far as fold-out beds went; his back only ached a little when he woke around nine with sunlight slanting through the blinds. Dean rolled out of bed and tugged on the same jeans and t-shirt from yesterday, then went looking for the bathroom.

Seventy percent of hating the job was because of Dad and Sam. Bloodstained towels on the floor, too many overnight vigils wishing he could pray to God. He'd spent most of his life afraid the job would take them. Not the way Stanford took Sam, because he'd known Sam was out there and he could call if he wanted to even if he didn't.

Then it did. It took Dad, and then it took Sam, beyond the reach of anything. Only he'd gotten Sam back. He'd gotten him back. Fuck the job.

The rest of the time he spent hating it, that was for strangers. Stuff like them having to explain to Bill Andrews that the only way to kill the thing in his son's closet was to use his son as bait.

Fucking, stupid job.

He tugged on his boots. Feeling about as alert as a drugged sloth, he stumbled out into the hall and found a bathroom. Sponge Bob and Simpsons toothbrushes rested in a cup next to soap stamped with an image of what looked like Batgirl, hard to make out since the soap was well-used.

Last night they hadn't bothered going out to the car for their stuff, so he didn't have his toothbrush. Dean splashed cold water on his face, looked at himself in the mirror and hey, same old Dean. Needed a shave. You'd never know to look at him how totally frikkin' screwed he was.

 _I wish you would drop the show,_ Sam'd said, and it was freaky how sometimes he could stare right into Dean. Drop the act, he'd splinter and fall apart -- and Sam knew that, he _knew_ that, damn him. And so great, Sam would feel better because what, he'd get proof that Dean minded _dying_? But then there was the whole problem of stitching himself back up again and no thank you. The act would have to stay in place -- they had work to do. Besides, Dean didn't really mind all of it, the deal, not really, because Sam had been _dead_ and he wasn't now so there was just no fucking way he'd have it another way.

This was how it had to be.

When he got halfway down the stairs he smelled bacon and strawberry pop-tarts, making his stomach growl like a savage thing. But he stopped in the hall when he heard Sam's voice.

"Plus, there's your Dad, he's not going to let anything get you. And Cal, I'll bet Cal would beat that monster up..."

Dean moved closer and saw Sam sitting next to Tommy, who had his elbows on the table, chin propped in his palms. Tommy's face was so glum that Dean felt it, right in his gut, poor little kid. No, Dean liked the job.

He liked it just fine.

"No, she wouldn't," Tommy said.

Sam lowered his head. "Sure she would."

"No, she wouldn't."

"Why do you say that?" Sam asked.

"Because she doesn't like me."

"How do you know she doesn't like you?"

"Last week she called me a dorkface."

"Oh." Sam bit his lower lip, and Dean could see him trying not to laugh. "Um. Tommy, that doesn't mean she doesn't like you."

Tommy looked up at Sam like this was the freakiest theory he'd ever heard on how the universe worked. "It doesn't?"

"Nah. See, when she says you're a dorkface that's like her saying 'I love you.'"

"No way."

"Yeah, it's like this weird secret language. You just have to learn how to listen."

"Excuse me," Cal walked past Dean in the hallway, and he jumped. He hadn't heard her moving up behind him like that, what, did she have ninja training? He followed her as she went into the kitchen. She kissed the top of Tommy's head. "Morning, dweeb. Where's Dad?"

"Taking out the trash," Tommy said.

"Morning, dorkface." Dean smacked Sam on the back of the head, hard, as he walked past.

"Morning, jerk," Sam said, ducking and making an annoyed face so severe Dean was pretty sure that insult wasn't ruder only because Sam was conscious of minors in the room.

The back door opened and Bill walked in. "Morning," he said. "You two find everything you needed last night?"

"Yeah," said Dean. "Thanks for letting us stay here." He needed coffee so bad he could practically taste the bitterness already. His mouth watered from the smell of the bacon. The kettle on the stove was already hot, mugs out with a spoonful or two of instant already in them, waiting for the water.

"Uh." Rubbing his hands over his tired face, Bill headed for the stove and stood next to Dean. "You guys kind of...shot the scary monster that almost ate my kid. So you're welcome here."

Dean almost pointed out that they'd only wounded it, that the thing was still alive but that would open the discussion he was trying to put off. For now, breakfast was the way to go. Definitely, breakfast, with bacon burnt just the right amount at the edges and also, Dean hadn't had a Pop Tart in a few years. Mostly because he didn't like them cold, and not every motel room had a toaster, and when they did rent a place with a kitchenette for a few nights, seemed like he was always thinking too much about the hunt to ponder the finer points of what they should have for breakfast. Breakfast was always diners -- and what diner served Pop Tarts, anyway (he seemed to remember one somewhere in Michigan that did) -- or donuts or a fast food egg and sausage sandwich from a drive-through window.

This Bill guy was _organized_ , even if his house was messy. Dean fixed himself a mug of coffee and seeing as how there wasn't a mug in front of Sam already, he fixed some for him too, then put it down in front of him.

"Thanks," Sam said, wrapping his long fingers around the mug as if needing to warm them, before he poured what had to be at least half a cup of sugar in.

Dean sat next to Sam, drank his coffee, which was hot and not in the same zip code as fresh brewed -- but he wasn't going to be picky about that. Coffee was coffee. He'd had worse.

"So..." Bill said. "What now?"

"What now what?" Dean said, stalling.

"Last night, you said we'd pick this up in the morning. The thing in Tommy's room. You said last night that it might come back. How do we get rid of it for good?"

"You don't, we do. Me and Sam, we got it covered." Dean shot Sam a look across the table.

Sam took another swallow of coffee, then pushed back his chair. "We'll go get a few things out of our car and fill you in when we get back."

"We'll be here." Bill handed a napkin to Tommy. "Wipe your face," and Tommy obediently did.

* * *

The morning was sunny and their flannel seemed to be enough warmth for the short walk to the Impala.

"How do you want to tell him?" Sam said, as they both stepped off the sidewalk at the same time to cross the street. Dead leaves filled the gutter in front of a pretty house painted red with white pillars on the front porch. Nice street, lotta trees, you'd never know a strip mall and traffic-choked major highway was just a few miles off.

"The only way we can. His kid's in danger, Sam." Dean started to walk faster, the hunt almost a comfort in its certainty. A lot easier to think about than Sam waking up yelling from a nightmare, freezing on the job. "We tell him straight up."

"Right. Because that's always worked so well before."

"There's no point in dancing around it. Tommy has to be in his room, so we can get that thing to come back and we can waste it. No way to do that without Bill knowing."

"He seems like a good guy," Sam said. "Just. He didn't flip out at us too much or anything."

"Wait until we tell him. You'll see a freak out."

They reached the car, his girl waiting for them as he'd left her. He picked the dead leaves off the windshield, gave her a pat while Sam got the trunk open.

"I dreamed about this hunt. Before we found the Andrews," Sam said, when he was hidden from Dean's view behind the trunk lid.

The stab of panic in Dean's chest took care of the contentment of a sunny fall day, his car, and a stomach full of bacon and Pop Tarts.

"What?" Dean said.

Sam propped up the trunk's false bottom with the old shotgun and started rummaging among the weapons. When Sam said nothing, just kept his head down, Dean grabbed his elbow, harder than he'd meant. "You have a vision?" The words came out sharp and he hoped Sam couldn't hear how scared they sounded.

"No." Sam gently tugged his arm out of Dean's grasp. "It wasn't a vision. It was...I dreamed about a monster in the closet before we saw it. A few nights before we even saw Tommy and Cal and Bill in the diner."

"That sounds like a vision to me, Sammy. Jesus fuck, how long were you planning to take before you told me?"

"I said, it wasn't a vision!" Sam turned to him, eyes darkened, as he shoved aside a book of Latin incantations with too much force. "It wasn't the future, it was the past. Our past." He stepped back from the trunk and straightened up, arms out at his sides in a way that looked helpless. "Dreams aren't usually so precise, right? They're usually mixed up and weird. Even my visions were kind of dreamlike, all these disjointed images and out of order. But this --" Sam wrapped one arm across his own chest, rubbing his shoulder. "This wasn't even like memory, because memory's kind of disjointed too, right? We remember bits of things. But these dreams, it's like I was _reliving_ it. The night I finally killed the thing in my closet. And then you and Dad did something with the corpse." He swallowed, dropped his arm to his side again.

Dean made himself take a few deep breaths, trying to figure out what to say. Moments of that night were burned into his head, as they probably were into Sam's. He'd dreamed about it a few times, but those had been regular old dreams, where the details were wrong or the monster suddenly turned into Madonna and started dancing and singing around Sam's room while Dad played the violin.

Okay, so his dreams were weird sometimes.

"Not a vision, got it," Dean said, keeping his voice level. "But...kind of like a vision, right?" A car hurried by them, the back-draft kicking the dead leaves into a swirling circle. "Because you dreamed about your monster, and then we find another kid with a monster."

"A vision in reverse, sort of." Sam leaned against the side of the car, reaching behind him to put his palms against the metal.

"Headaches?"

"Nope."

The sun went behind a cloud. Wishing he'd worn something heavier than just a flannel shirt after all, Dean went over to lean against the car next to his brother.

They didn't speak for a few minutes, and that was fine. The peace of the morning and the street settled over them, giving Dean a chance to recalibrate with the new information that Sam wasn't having visions, not exactly, only he sort of was, only they weren't visions they were memories, only not. _Shit._

"Hey, Dean?" Sam began, finally breaking that safe quiet, and Dean knew, before Sam even went any further, this was going to be a sticky one. "How did you get to my room so quickly that night?"

"I run fast," Dean said, feeling the ache as his jaw clenched.

"But your room was farther away than Dad's and you got there first." Sam paused. "Almost before I'd even finished screaming--"

 _Don't go there. Crap, don't go there. Don't--_

"Because I felt how scared you were. In here." Dean tapped his own chest. "Before you screamed."

He looked off at the brown and golden woods, not at Sam, but Dean heard him sharply inhale. This wasn't over, he knew this wasn't over, but he needed it to be over for right now so Dean pushed himself off his car and returned to the trunk. Sam remained leaning against the car like he'd been glued there.

Dean made as much noise as he could rearranging boxes of ammo and bottles of holy water, searching for what they needed. "We tell Bill straight up," he said, finding what he wanted and replacing the false bottom. He slammed the trunk shut. "And then tonight, we kill this thing."

* * *

But they didn't tell him right away. As they walked across the front lawn with their duffels, Sam said, "Dean, y'know, we should try--"

"Yeah, Sammy. I know."

They spent most of the day holed up in Bill's home office, where Sam could plug his laptop into the ethernet connection. Dean spread a couple of towels out on the floor and went to work cleaning and oiling the guns while Sam got online at his usual message boards and blogs. He sent out bunches of emails, gathering what information he could on monsters in the closet.

Bill's office was as cluttered as the rest of his house, stacks of files next to the chairs, shelves full of law books, a wall of diplomas, pictures of Cal and Tommy on the desk and table. Dean paused with an oil-stained rag in his hand and watched Sam work. The sun coming in through the slats of the blinds shed strips of shadow over his brother, who seemed to fit there at the paper-strewn desk. The pictures, the law diplomas, the office, that could've been Sam's life. It looked like Sam's life. But they were both well past there being any point in thinking about that. Things were what they were. Dean rubbed the barrel of the shotgun clean, remembering Sam in a suit and tie, clean and prosperous without the haunted look, a gorgeous blonde on his arm, a smile that was and yet wasn't anything like his Sam.

At around one, a fax came in from Bobby, copied pages from some old volume, with a cover sheet reading "don't say I didn't tell you so" in Bobby's scrawl. The page documented four cases where the monster wouldn't emerge unless the child was in the room alone.

A moment later Dean's cell phone went off.

"Hey, Bobby."

"You boys find anything else yet?"

Sam was looking at him so Dean made a question face and Sam shook his head.

"No," Dean said.

"Look, Dean, it's rotten having to put a kid in danger to get the job done, but if you don't do it, he'll be a lot worse off. Weren't for you two being there, he'd get taken."

"There's gotta be something..."

"It's common knowledge, boy. They don't come out except for the kid." Bobby paused. "Call if you need anything else."

"Okay, thanks Bobby." Dean ended the call, then looked down at the shotgun parts arranged in front of him, savoring the easy way his brain saw what went where without having to puzzle over it, knew how the pieces fit. He could do it blindfolded, had done it blindfolded a hundred times during Dad's training sessions.

"Dean?" said Sam.

"Let me put these back together first. Then we'll go tell him."

* * *

"Cal, take Tommy outside and play for a while," Bill said softly, as if trying to make her believe it was her idea.

"But Dad..." Cal's lower lip drew in, jaw jutting.

"Just do what I say, honey. This is grown-up talk."

With a sharp, annoyed tug, Cal tightened the ponytail holding back her dark hair and shot all three of them a glare that bumped Sam down to amateur status in the pissy looks department. She hooked her arm around Tommy's neck in a hammerlock, ignoring his noises of protest, and led her little brother out of the living room. The afternoon was inching towards dusk, but not quite there yet.

"Okay, tell me. Right now." Bill sat in the center of his couch, back rigid and his hands on his knees.

Sam leaned forward in his chair and opened his mouth; the hunch of his shoulders and his expression signaled a long, rambling explanation.

"Tommy has to be bait," Dean said.

"What?" Bill's fingers clenched more tightly on his knees.

"It's how the monsters work. They go after a kid, they won't come out unless a kid's in the room. Only way to kill it is to get it to come out again."

"You're not using my kid as bait."

"We don't like it either." Sam's thumb worked the frayed edge of his sleeve, his mouth turning down. "We've tried to find another way. Believe me, we've tried."

"I promise you we won't let anything happen to him," Dean said, but the words wouldn't be enough, they never were, not even to himself. It was true, though, there was no way, no friggin' way he'd let the monster near Tommy, and Sam wouldn't either.

But he felt no surprise at all when Bill stood up too slow, his whole demeanor changing.

"I think you'll leave now," he said, the pleasant voice gone cold.

"Bill--"

"That's Mr. Andrews to you. God, you think I'll listen to a couple of...of _strangers_ I don't even know over the safety of my child? Get. Out."

"C'mon, Sam." Dean took Sam's arm, feeling the tension in his brother's muscles.

But Sam had that look on his face, that digging-in look, and he didn't move, not a millimeter, when Dean tugged. It was really scary that he couldn't actually budge Sam by light force, not any more -- Dean'd been aware of that for about a year but the reminders threw him every time. Short of tackling Sam to the rug, Gigantor was staying put.

Bill's fingers twitched, and Dean sucked in a breath, caught in a flash of deja-vu, because Sam was -- this was _Dad_ , this was how Dad was with people and Dean always stepping in.

"Hear us out, please," Sam said, nothing threatening at all, just pleading. "Please."

"What?" Bill folded his arms.

"We know how to deal with this. I had one. When I was nine. We know how the monsters work and how to end them and how to make sure they don't come back."

"Jesus, how long have you two been in this line of work anyway?"

"A long time," Sam said, and in the tired note in his voice, Dean felt things click over to a new place where he saw Sam hunting on after Dean was gone, an eternal wanderer. The very small box he kept shoved away in the back of his brain threatened to open. He pushed down the brief and overwhelming panic.

"The monster would only come out for Sam," Dean said, his voice maybe a little too sharp. "Not for me, not for our father."

He couldn't quite manage the next part, _and our dad used Sam as bait_ because it sounded wrong, with the words put together like that, even though to him it had made sense, they'd had no choice.

Bill turned to look out the window, where the day was fading, where he could probably see his kids playing on the front lawn. His shoulders twitched, convulsed like a shiver, before he turned back to them.

"Why do you need Tommy? "

"Only way to stop it for certain, keep any more from coming back." Dean nodded tightly. "The monsters get in through a portal that opens up in the back of closets, once they pick one."

"No one knows for sure what's on the other side -- but when the monsters come, they don't kill, not right off. They take the child through, back with them." Sam gestured, turning his palms up. "Back to...wherever they came from."

"Kinda like in _Monsters, Inc.,_ " Dean said, a heavy weight in his chest. He felt no humor as he gave Bill a half-smile. "Only less cuddly."

"Well. Might as well throw that DVD away." Bill's mouth took on a sour twist.

"We can't just kill it," Sam said, standing in that hunched way he had, as if trying to make up for his earlier insistence, and look less threatening. "We have to use the blood of a monster to paint sigils on the back of the closet. To seal the portal."

"Are you sure? There isn't some other way?" Bill's voice took on a pleading note. Dean shut his eyes a moment, not wanting to hear it.

"Believe me, we looked," Dean said.

"We researched recent cases," Sam said. "Called people we know. Everyone says the same thing. What Dean said is true. It's the only way."

Bill sighed. "I'll have to talk to Tommy. It's up to him. If he doesn't want to do it--" his gaze moved to Sam, then to Dean, his eyes hard. "We're not doing it."

* * *

The sun hung low, almost below the rooftops of the houses across the street. Dean looked at the bare trees caught in the pale light and thought about how a lot of horror movies always seemed to be set in the fall. Did dead leaves seem all moody and creepy because they were moody and creepy, or had horror movies made everyone feel like they were? He'd found out when he was ten that big old empty creepy-ass Victorian mansions were frightening for a reason, so maybe dead leaves really were a reason to be a little uneasy.

Signs of a dying year.

Tommy stood on the grass watching his sister as she dribbled a basketball on the driveway, took aim at the net, shot, scored. Cal retrieved the ball one-handed, with easy motions that looked automatic.

"Hey, guys," Bill said, as he and Sam and Dean walked towards them both. "Have to talk to you both about something. Cal, come over here."

The dribbling stopped, and Cal walked over, the ball tucked under her arm, while Bill knelt on the grass in front of his son.

Bill looked right at Tommy. "I'm sorry," he said, then reached out to touch Cal's arm, drawing her closer. "Both of you. The monster was real and I didn't believe you. I should've listened."

"It's okay, Daddy." Tommy put his hands on his father's shoulders.

"Yeah, Dad, it sounds pretty crazy," Cal said. "I don't blame you..."

"Go ahead, kiddo, you're dying to say it." He gave his daughter a lopsided smile.

"I _told_ you so," Cal said, her voice teasing. She rolled her eyes.

"These two men here, Sam and Dean, they're going to get rid of it." Bill cleared his throat. "But they need our help. They need Tommy to do something."

Dean saw how Cal shifted immediately, moving closer to her brother, and knew she probably wasn't even aware of doing that.

"The monsters work a certain way," Sam crouched down, so the kids could look him in the eye. "They only come out for a kid. We need to get Tommy's monster to come back so we can kill it. Make sure it never comes back again. To do that..."

"Tommy's got to be in the room," Dean said. "And we can't."

Tommy's eyes widened.

"No way." Cal dropped the basketball. "Use me. I can be bait!"

"It won't come after you," Dean said, the panic in her face twisting at something inside of him. "The monster picks a kid and that's it."

"Tommy," Bill said. "I don't want you to do this. It scares me. But you'll be safe if they can kill it. They have to kill it and then they do something special with the blood. They'll paint marks in the closet and nothing will be able to come out of it to hurt you again. Do you understand?"

Tommy nodded, leaning against his father.

"No!" Cal shouted. "Dad, I'll call Mom, I'll tell her--"

"Tell her what?" he said, voice sharp. "Tell her there's a monster, and two strange guys are here to kill it? Do you know how that will sound to her, what will happen? Do you..." Bill drew in a breath before he continued, and Dean heard his voice crack on the words. "Do you want to move to Chicago and not live with me?"

It seemed like he wasn't using it as a threat, but warning her of something he feared. From the way Cal's face crumpled, he thought she didn't want it to happen either.

"No," she said, her voice very small.

Shit, Dean hated family drama.

He saw the basketball lying in the grass a few yards away, where it'd rolled after Cal let go of it. He walked over and picked it up, weighed it in his hands, feeling the familiar, pleasant roughness.

Guiding Tommy towards the house, Bill glanced over his shoulder. "Can you give us a little time?"

"Of course," said Sam.

"Cal," Bill said, and after a moment of hesitation, Cal followed, her head down.

The front door closed behind the Andrews. The wind kicked up and beyond the pleasant small houses the horizon started going to red.

"Think fast," Dean said, thrusting the basketball like he was going to throw it.

Sam fell for it, like he always did, whole body jerking. Dean laughed.

"Jackass," Sam said.

"Want to play?" Dean put the ball on his index finger and gave it a push.

"How many?" Sam shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it to the grass.

"Eleven. Winner's outs. Three point line's here." Grabbing Sam's jacket, Dean dropped it about halfway down the driveway.

"Who's first?" Sam stepped onto the concrete of the driveway, started to stretch, rotating his shoulders.

Moving over to face Sam, Dean stopped spinning the ball, caught it with his left hand, then fisted his right. Sam did the same.

Rock beat scissors. Paper beat rock. Rock beat scissors. Sam grabbed the ball from Dean's hand, and the game was on.

For a few minutes it was nothing but their breaths, the sound of the basketball hitting concrete or against the backboard, the quiet swish of the net. Dean felt everything else growing small and far away as he pivoted, dodged Sam's arms, feinted left, went right, ducked, turned and shot.

Then Dean missed and Sam started with the ball.

"Foul," Sam said, after Dean slammed into him and the shot went wild.

"Excuses, excuses." Dean jogged off to get the ball, threw it hard at Sam, who caught it and they started all over again.

"Hey Dean?" Sam dribbled, then darted right, while Dean kept on him, staying close, running interference and trying not to actually touch. "What you said, about knowing I was afraid--"

Dean accidentally-on-purpose let his elbow hit Sam in the stomach but Sam ignored it, darted around Dean, and made the shot.

"--that's happened other times, hasn't it?" Sam said, as the ball teetered on the rim, then dropped through the net. It bounced once and Sam caught it.

Bending over with his palms against his thighs, Dean felt his heart jump, thudding not just in his chest but now somewhere up in his throat.

"Yeah," he said, stealing the ball and racing back towards the three point line, making a wide arc to avoid Sam. "Bunch of times when we were kids. Twice when we were adults."

"It ever happen with anyone else?" Sam tried to grab the ball and Dean pivoted. "Dad? Anyone?"

"Fuck. No."

"That's how you got back so fast in Palo Alto. The night Jess was killed." That wasn't a question, that was the goddamned light bulb going on in Sam's head. "The way I've worked it out, it was me projecting, and you hearing me. Like a transmitter and a receiver." Sam was right up in his grille, trying to grab the ball, and no matter how Dean feinted and dodged, he couldn't seem to get a clear shot at the net.

Screw it. Dean shoved Sam, leapt forward, and made the shot.

"Foul," Sam said.

"Wuss," said Dean. "You...you think it's related to your visions? To old yellow eyes?" He hated even asking it, but he'd been worrying over it since Sam told him about the dream. Worrying about who and what Sam was ever since Dean went to the crossroads and Sam woke up in Cold Oak with a scar on his back.

"I'm not sure," Sam said, going to the three-point line for his shot. He scored and the ball bounced back to him.

"Well, I've got no special powers." Dean bounced in place, keeping himself moving. "It's got to be you doing something freaky with your brain."

"But this, it happened when we were kids. My visions didn't kick in until I was twenty-three." Sam started dribbling the ball slow, then speeding up, faking Dean out which was he was going.

"Could be a latent thing," Dean said, and that was what he didn't want to look at, something strange about Sam himself. Sam stumbled and recovered. Dean moved with him, the soles of their boots scuffling on the cement driveway. "Didn't need to wait until you were twenty-three for it work." He snatched the ball, pivoting away from Sam.

"Maybe. But if it was related to Azazel..." Sam pivoted with him. "The last time it happened --" Sam made a wall of himself between Dean and the backboard "--was in Illinois, two years ago. Not too long after my visions started. Azazel was still alive and kicking for a year after that."

He stayed low. Sam was taller and longer-limbed and could box him in, but Dean's footwork was better and faster, and the height difference actually helped him, because he could duck under Sam's arms.

Dean could almost always read Sam's moves, practically before Sam had even thought of them. But right now, he couldn't.

He took a shot. The ball bounced off the backboard, flew off to the lawn, and rolled down towards the sidewalk. Dean started after it, but Sam was quicker, bounding past him, scooping up the ball, then planting himself in Dean's path.

"Dean. Stop. Just. Stop. Stop for a second."

As soon as he did, the wind went cold against the sweat on Dean's face and neck. He'd rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt and the chill made the hairs on the back of his arms stand up. The light was dying, shadows getting deeper, the sky now a furious red that made Dean think of fire. He wondered if all of the sky looked that way in hell.

"Why hasn't it been happening?" Sam turned the basketball over and over in his long fingers. "It's not as if I was never scared last year."

"I dunno, Sam." He remembered the yellow-eyed bastard in the cowboy graveyard, _how certain are you that what you brought back is one-hundred percent Sam?_ This -- oh, _please_ \-- maybe this was something that didn't belong to Azazel. Dean made himself look at his brother. "Maybe it's because...when it happened in Palo Alto, and even Illinois, you hadn't hunted in a while, not for years. So at first, yeah. It was like when we were kids. But things changed." Thinking about the hard look on Sam's face when he fired the Colt, about Gordon, doubt skittered across the back of Dean's mind like a spider. "You got better at hunting." Dean grabbed the basketball from Sam, a little too roughly. "Maybe you don't need to transmit anymore."

He turned from Sam and walked quickly up towards the house. Better for them both if he pretended he hadn't seen that flash of -- whatever it was -- in Sam's eyes. Hurt.

  


  


artwork by [](http://dun.livejournal.com/profile)[**dun**](http://dun.livejournal.com/)  


  


  
[Part 4](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/147301.html)   


  
[Part 1](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/146485.html)|[Part 2](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/146767.html)


	4. Receiver

"Here's how it lays out," Dean said. "There are a couple of rules."

He paced back and forth in front of Bill, Tommy, and Cal, who sat side by side on the couch, eyes tracking him. Cal's face was blotchy, like she'd been crying, but her ponytail was redone into neat smoothness. Tommy sat with his back shotgun straight and Dean thought it was wrong. They shouldn't have to be that steely, they were too young, but it was nothing new, he'd seen it in plenty of kids. Michael, Sari, Lucas, and (he thought with a odd, hollow ache) Ben. And he and Sam hadn't been any different. Maybe no kid ever really escaped it -- people underestimated them all the time, but kids, Dean decided, were the fiercest fighters against scary things. It was the adults who usually fell apart.

"Rule number one, me 'n Sam are in charge. Rule number two, Cal, you stay downstairs, you _do not come up_ no matter what you hear. Got it?"

Cal turned and looked at her father, mouth opening with rebellion but Bill said, "Do what he says, honey." He'd tried to convince Cal to go to a friend's house for an overnight and Cal had dug in, refused to go.

She slumped back, glaring daggers at Dean.

"Got it?" He said, stopping in front of her. Cal met his stare.

"It'll make it easier for us to protect Tommy if you're safe out of the way." Sam, standing over by the armchair, offered her an apologetic smile.

"Cal," Dean said. "It sucks, I know. Just..." he groped for the words that would make it okay for her, being told she couldn't be there to protect her brother, and failed to find them. "Rule three," Dean went on, turning away. "When the neighbors ask later what all the craziness was about, _lie_. Work out your story ahead of time."

"A stray rabid dog got into the house." Bill shrugged. "We haven't worked out the rest yet. Not sure how I'll explain the shotgun noise."

"Car backfiring," Tommy said. He leaned against his father, expression serious and calm. "On the road out back.

"Oh. Hey. Right," said Bill.

"Nice," said Dean. Kid was sharp. "When you put Tommy to bed at the usual time, me and Sam will be waiting across the hall --"

"Wait, hold on. And me." Bill pointed to his chest.

"You know how to handle a shotgun? Or a handgun?"

"Well, no. But it's my kid. I'm not staying away."

"He's _my_ brother," Cal put in. "You get to be upstairs, so do I."

"Yes, but you're a lot tinier than me!" Bill said, gesturing. "Daddies get priority in being on guard duty ahead of big sisters. It's in the Daddy Handbook, paragraph nine, subsection b. Right after paragraph eight that states that children shall obey their fathers, who are much older and smarter than them. You stay at the foot of the stairs. I'll be waiting for that monster with a baseball bat." He glanced at Dean. "Think of me as back-up."

"There's no guarantee the monster will show tonight," Dean said. "If it doesn't, we'll try again tomorrow night, and the next, until we get the fu--the thing."

Tommy clenched his hands in his lap, then moved to tuck them under his legs instead, hiding the fear. Dean saw him shiver once and remembered how Sam had looked, only a few years older than Tommy, when Dad had handed him a gun for the first time.

* * *

Their gear was in Bill's office where they'd left it, since it made a logical base of ops, with Cal and Tommy under strict instructions not to go in.

They went to work loading the shotguns and filling a bag with extra ammo, two hunting knives, a jar, and a brush. The room was half-dark, the only light from a green-shaded banker's lamp. Dean watched Sam tuck the Glock into the waistband of his jeans so it nestled at the base of his back, his movements self-assured. Then he stopped and spent too long staring at nothing. Dean thought of how Sam had frozen last night, that terrifying moment when his eyes had gone vacant. Shotgun aimed, but like he was a thousand miles and sixteen years away.

"Sam, are you..." _Okay_ wasn't how Dean wanted to end that sentence. Of course Sam wasn't okay. But not less okay than usual, that's what Dean wanted to know.

"I keep thinking about it." Sam eyes moved from a far-off gaze at the window, to Dean, and he smiled with a bitter helplessness. "Shooting that thing when I was nine. Shooting Madison. Jake. Beheading Gordon. The way the priest and that girl looked when I killed them." He turned away, picked up the last box of ammo shells, and put it in the duffel bag.

Dean's throat went dry; he couldn't swallow. Finally, he found his voice, with the vague, desperate sense that he needed to drag Sam back, before he got lost. "I lied to you."

Sam's head snapped around. "What? When?"

"When you asked me if I remembered all my kills. I lied. I remember them." Dean zipped the bag closed. "I remember every one. But especially I remember the ones with human faces." He grabbed the canvas handle of the duffel and rose to his feet with it. "The rest of what I said is true. You can't let it eat you alive, Sammy."

Shit, what he'd give to erase the heaviness from Sam's eyes, but he had nothing left to barter or trade. He'd found a way around death but he couldn't find a way around the rest, and it was unfair, just fucking unfair.

"C'mon, Haley Joel." Dean put his palm against the back of Sam's neck, and Sam lowered his head, even leaned into the touch a little. "Let's go show that monster how we do things downtown."

* * *

A small circle of light in the corner of the room kept winking on and off in the darkness, revealing the pink glow of a hand cupped over a flashlight. That was Cal, sitting in a canvas sling chair. Dean wondered if she was bored, or turning the light on and off to comfort herself.

Bill sat next to Dean on the floor, a baseball bat in his lap, while Sam faced them sitting on the bed holding his shotgun. The guest room door and Tommy's door across the hall were open a few inches. Dean had the baby monitor on the rug next to him. The aluminum can trap was set, and beyond the door, Tommy was lying in bed with the blanket tucked all the way up to his chin, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

"For the record, guys," Bill whispered, leaning forward with hands gripping the wood of his Louisville Slugger, "my ex is a terrific person. She loves Cal and Tommy, and because of that, she would try to take them away from me if she thought I'd gone out of my ever lovin' mind."

"Dude, you don't have to explain." Dean leaned his head back against the wall, feeling the familiar curve of the shotgun stock beneath his fingers.

"I know. Guess I feel guilty for not calling her -- Cal and Tommy are in danger and she doesn't know. It's not right."

"Sometimes it's better not to know," Sam said, as Cal's flashlight blinked on and off again.

"Only way she wouldn't think you were out of your ever lovin' mind," Dean said, "would be if she actually saw the monster. And we don't have time for show-and-tell."

They waited, not talking anymore. The wail of a fire truck siren sounded far off. It faded.

Into the fresh quiet the jangle of aluminum cans knocking together sounded over the monitor and from across the hall.

Sam was through the door before Dean could get to his feet -- and he was lightning quick, but Sam was quicker. They bolted across the hall, Sam kicking Tommy's door so it banged open, striking the wall.

Near the closet, a shape moved. On the bed, Dean made out Tommy's form, hunched up against the headboard.

That was how he'd found Sam, all those years ago.

As Dean stepped up to join Sam at the foot of Tommy's bed, Bill smacked the switch on the wall, filling the room with light. Dean cursed and blinked, raising his shotgun to his shoulder as he waited for his eyes to adjust so he could fire.

When they did, Dean saw there was more than one monster.

Crap.

Three more, behind the first, slinking out of the closet like dark ink that had fur and claws and eyes, stinking up the place. Four of them, total, advancing towards the bed where Tommy looked like he'd crawl up the wall if he could to get away from them.

Shit, shit, _shit_. Dean fired, hitting the first one, while the other three surged past it. Sam got the next one, leaving two. Tommy screamed.

Things happened in a jumble that Dean had a hard time sorting out in his head later. Bill ran forward, bat raised, a yell scarier than any battle cry Dean had ever heard in the movies bursting from him. The bat came down on the third monster. Dean saw two more melt from the shadows among Tommy's clothes. Reinforcements, they'd brought fucking reinforcements. What, did the monsters have a friggin' meeting? _We have a problem, Winchesters have been sighted in our territory, better call special ops..._ Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick.

Sam leapt up on the bed, standing over Tommy, protecting him, and fired. Then Cal was suddenly in the room too, wielding a baseball bat of her own. She got under Dean's feet, throwing him off balance for a moment. He grabbed for her, intending to push her back out into the relative safety of the hallway, but she got past him, launched herself at one of the monsters.

For a pitcher, she had an awfully good swinging arm. He heard monster bones crunch.

"Bill," Dean shouted, and Bill looked behind him and saw his daughter. He grabbed her arm, yanking her behind him, out of reach of a swiping claw, then hit the monster in the face with the bat.

Sam fired again, but one of them got too close, _Dean_ let it get too close, and Sam missed. The creature leapt at Sam and they fell together off the far side of the bed, slamming against the wall. Feeling like he'd never be able to make a sound ever again for the rest of his pathetically short life, Dean shot the monster and was two steps into running around the bed to help Sam when he remembered no, protect Tommy.

One had grabbed the kid. Not to kill, not to shred. It hooked its lanky, hairy arm around Tommy, tucking him under with movements almost ape-like, and started for the closet with its prize.

 _Oh, I don't think so..._ but he couldn't shoot with Tommy held in the thing's arms. He saw Sam getting to his feet, tugging on the Darth Maul sheets to pull himself up, looking dazed with a bit of blood on the side of his face.

This was Dean's fault, completely his fault, for not anticipating, for assuming they had this under control...why? Because they'd dealt with one when they were kids? It was the fuckin' shtriga all over again.

Dean darted after the monster that had Tommy, and found two more in his way. He barely felt it as claws tore into him, ripping through denim into his calf, as Bill turned, and saw his son. Bill gripped Cal's arm, unable to leave her, while Dean fought off the monsters, to get past them and after Tommy.

It was like one of those nightmares Dean'd had all his life, where he was running as hard as he could but hardly moving -- a few times he was being chased by something big and dark and frightening. In most of the dreams, he'd also been running after Sam, to keep him from a harm he could never remember afterwards.

Moving along the outer wall, Sam leapt past them and tackled the monster that had Tommy, bringing it down. The thing's companions turned from Dean, going after Sam. Dean kicked the nearest monster in the jaw. The beast let out a yelp, tumbling backwards into the dresser, sending legos and action figures and erector set pieces to the floor. Before it could get up again, Dean shot it, then clubbed the other one with the butt of his shotgun, hard enough to knock the thing against the wall. That cleared their way, and before Dean could move, Bill let go of Cal and ran forward.

He grabbed hold of Tommy's leg, pulling while Sam wrapped his arm around the monster's neck, trying to strangle it. As Cal darted in, Dean put out a hand to stop her, but she ducked. The eyes of the one holding Tommy were closing, its long shaggy arms going limp. Cal kicked it in the ribs, and then Bill wrenched Tommy free.

Sam uncurled his arm from around the creature's neck, got to his feet, pushed the shotgun against the monster's head, and pulled the trigger. Blood spattered over the aluminum cans. The erector set construction was destroyed, pieces lying all over, mixed with legos and socks, all stained with monster blood.

Lying on his back with Tommy held in his arms, Bill struggled to sit up, and Cal hurried over, helping him.

"I thought I told you to stay away," Bill gasped out.

"I couldn't." Cal's face crumpled, a sob wrenching from her as her father pulled her into a one-armed hug.

He held her tightly to him, Tommy tucked close under his other arm. "I know," he said. "I know."

"Sam?" The blood was trickling in a thin line down his brother's face. Dean grabbed his shoulder, took Sam's chin in his hand, checking the damage.

"I'm okay." He stepped back and held his sleeve against the cut on his face. "Dean. Shit. Your leg." Dean looked down and saw the blood staining the denim. Felt like a hundred hot knives had jumped to life down there. Funny, how he hadn't felt it at all until now.

"Doesn't hurt," Dean said.

"Liar."

"You can keep them from coming back, right?" Bill said, voice gone hoarse as he held his children. "You can do that, right, you said you can do that."

"We can do that," Dean said, looking at the monster corpses lying on the floor among the toys.

Sam bent and grabbed what looked like a relatively clean cotton shirt from the floor. "Sit," he said to Dean.

Reluctantly, Dean sat on the edge of Tommy's bed, propped his leg on the mattress, and rolled up the cuff of his jeans. At Sam's sharply indrawn breath, Dean shrugged. "Hey, it's not _that_ bad."

"Shut up," said Sam, wrapping the shirt around Dean's leg. "We'll have to get antiseptic on that, maybe holy water."

"What if the sigils fade?" Bill asked.

"Even if you paint over the sigils, they'll be there, underneath," Dean said. "Only way to get rid of them is to tear the house down, and if you do that, the portal's destroyed anyway."

"Oh." Bill looked from Tommy to Cal.

"Forever?" Tommy asked.

"We don't know for sure," Sam said, tying the shirt around Dean's calf. The white fabric was already staining with circles of blood. At least the cut on Sam's head looked like it wasn't bleeding badly. "A long time, though."

"Good," said Tommy.

* * *

It was going to be one big pain in the ass clean-up job.

Six monster corpses lay on the floor of Tommy's room.

"Could do an old fashioned dig-and-dump." Dean nudged one of them with the toe of his boot, and the monster's limbs flopped limply.

"Or take them to the city dump," Sam said, mouth turned down. The creatures reeked, even more in death. "They're small enough we can stuff them on the back seat."

"You want to put those smelly, bloody things in the back seat of my baby? Wait a sec--"

"We'll put them in garbage bags." Sam wrinkled his nose.

"They won't all fit in one trip." He spied a stuff animal, lying forlorn and blood-spattered next to the bed, a stuffed tiger that had seen better days. "Dig-and-dump in the back yard," Dean said.

Without knowing why, he picked up the stuffed tiger and put it on the chair. He was guessing Bill would wash it for his son rather than throw it away, monster blood or no monster blood.

Wouldn't this be a fun story for Bill to tell the grandkids. Rumors would probably get around the neighborhood, _guess what I heard is buried in Andrews' back yard?_

There had already been one frantic phone call for Bill to field. _Yes, Mrs. Derkins, freaked my kids out. Big truck backfiring on Eastman Road....I nearly had a heart attack myself...oh, they should definitely maintain those things better._

"First things first." Sam got a hunting knife out of the duffel bag and crouched by the nearest corpse. He waited, looking up at Dean.

Dean had kind of assumed he'd be doing the blood-letting but Sam showed no hesitation. He seemed alert, sure of himself. So Dean got the empty glass jar they had ready, and knelt, his leg stinging in the fresh layer of gauze and bandage Sam had applied. Sam slit the monster's throat, and Dean pressed the lip of the jar against the fur, catching the blood that trickled out.

All it took was the blood of one.

"You want to?" Sam said, getting to his feet. The blood, darker and thicker than a human's, stained the blade of the knife; Sam dug a rag out of the bag and cleaned it off.

Then he put the knife away.

Dean handed Sam the jar and a paint brush. "Nope. This one's yours."

Sitting on the edge of Tommy's bed, Dean watched as Sam tugged the chain to turn on the closet light, put the jar on the floor at his feet, and stood with Dad's journal open in one hand, the blood-soaked paint brush in the other.

He worked with careful concentration, glancing down at the journal periodically, his back hunched a little. Slowly, the sigils appeared, circles, dots, curved lines and letters in languages long dead, the blood shining lurid under the bare bulb. The night Sam shot his monster, Dad had showed Dean how to slit the creature's throat, how to clean the knife after. Then Dean had watched as Dad painted the signs on the wall that would seal off the portal.

He wasn't sure how Sam knew how to do this, since as far as Dean knew, Sam had been tucked safely away in Dad's bedroom while they did the work. Yet Sam did the task the same way as Dad, same intense focus and sense of quietness, the line of his shoulder and incline of his head a clear message not to disturb until the job was finished.

* * *

Cal and Tommy were asleep in the family room when they came downstairs. As he followed Sam towards the kitchen, Dean paused to look in on them. This time, the kids were nestled up together on the couch, Cal's body curved around her brother, her back facing the room, an indomitable shape against all threats or intruders. Dean felt a small smile tugging at his mouth. All was right with the world.

In the kitchen, Sam was explaining to Bill what they wanted to do to his back yard. Bill gave them both a look that was more _god, no one would believe this shit_ than horror or shock. This guy knew how to roll with the punches.

"Okay." Bill took a few bottles of water out of the fridge, tossed them to Sam and Dean.

"What're you doing?" Sam asked.

"Helping you. The work will be faster with three of us digging."

"You don't have to..."

Bill weighed the third water bottle in his hand like it was a free weight. "You think I was born a lawyer? I put myself through school doing handy work." He flashed a grin, and then his face went somber again. "Besides. My kids you saved. My house. My mess. And you--" he gestured from Sam to Dean, "--are both injured. I've got at least one shovel in the garage."

"We have our own." Sam nodded. "We'll meet you out back in ten."

They started the work around one a.m. The ground was still soft enough for digging, not yet hardened with winter, the feel of the shovel and the rhythmic sound of the blade crunching into soil solid and true. Bill's presence threw off the familiarity; it'd been Dean and Sam for a few years now, and for a while before that, only him and Dad. It made him think of the years when Sam's legs and arms had gotten too ridiculously long for his body, when he sulked and complained more than dug. The three of them in some cemetery in the middle of the night while Dad's temper worked itself up to a rolling boil, steeped in sweat and dirt, and Dean made as many smart remarks as he could to diffuse the tension.

This was easier, Bill making jokes, Sam chuckling, grinning at Dean. They'd _won_ this one, Dean realized with a jolt of triumph. He laughed too, meeting Sam's grin. The ache in his leg made him slower, the pain growing more intense as the hours wore on but the work felt good.

It wasn't until they stopped that he really felt the burn in his calf.

"Dean?" Sam asked, forehead creasing.

"Fine." Dean took a few deep gulps of the bottled water, his head aching almost as much as his leg. "I'm fine."

And he was, at least for that night, for that moment, he really was, although he knew Sam wouldn't believe it and he hardly believed it himself. It wasn't that he thought some magical hoodoo force would make the deal null and void, just because he'd done a good deed. His life had never worked that way, he didn't expect it to. But he felt peaceful in a way he hadn't for a while, not since the high of those first few hours after they'd killed the yellow eyed bastard.

During a five minute break, Dean sat the back step, pulled out his cell and called the number he'd looked up online earlier. He left a message how the automated voice said he should, and hung up.

"What are you doing?" Sam said.

"Nothing. Just, y'know. There's an anonymous tip line to report unsafe construction sites." He finished off his water and chucked the bottle it into the big plastic bin.

"Oh. Good," Sam said softly. He sat down, bumped his knee again Dean's. "I mean...it could maybe help."

Dean flapped a hand, wondering if it really would. He felt disgustingly respectable, but his limbs ached too much for him to really think about it too hard.

They put the monsters in big garbage bags, and Dean thought how deeply screwed Bill would be if any sleepless neighbor happened to see the three of them wrestling what looked like dead bodies out into the yard, dumping them into a pit.

But the night was still, wind creaking softly through the trees. A wooden wind chime on the back porch of the next house over knocked a faint rhythm that set Dean off humming AC/DC.

* * *

He woke the next morning with sun hitting him in the face.

Dean's head felt foggy; it took him a moment to remember where he was, in Bill's guest room, on the fold-out couch that didn't bother his back. Oh, yeah.

After a quick shower, he'd changed the dressing on his leg himself before falling into bed, aches in every limb, feeling too warm.

A shadow fell over his face, a large shape blocking the light, and a large hand touched his forehead.

"You're not hot anymore," Sam said, peering down at him.

"I can find a hundred girls, right now, who will swear otherwise."

Sam didn't even roll his eyes at that, only tugged the blanket that Dean now realized had fallen halfway to the floor more securely over Dean. "You seemed a little feverish last night, but I think you're okay now. How's your leg?" Sam sat on the edge of the bed. He was already dressed, t-shirt and jeans and shoes, his hair tangled over the small bandage on his forehead. "And if you lie to me, I will kick your ass."

"You and what army?" He thought of lying, then looked at Sam. "Still hurts a little. But it's a dull throb, more than a burning pain." Dean pushed himself up on his elbows, his throat dry, and looked up at Sam. "You have any more flashback dreams, or weird dreams of any kind, or any more visions, you tell me right away, got it?"

"Sure, Dean, look, it's never happened before, just this one time and I think..."

"Promise me." His fingers closed tight around Sam's wrist as his brother tried to stand.

"Yeah. I promise." Sam said, and Dean held on longer than he'd intended, holding Sam's wrist too hard, wondering what else Sam was keeping from him, before he let go.

"We should hit the road today." Dean sat up, put his bare feet on the floorboards. Jesus, he wanted water even more than he wanted coffee.

He felt a tug in his chest that he hadn't expected, the sharp realization that, like all the others, he'd likely never set eyes on Cal or Tommy again.

* * *

Bill shook their hand, before Sam handed him a folded piece of paper.

"If there's any more trouble," he said. "Call us."

The front door was open to the afternoon, their duffel bags ready to go. Sam reached down for his, and staggered, completely unprepared when Tommy suddenly launched himself at Sam, flinging his arms around his torso.

"Hey." Sam chuckled in surprise and knelt down to return the hug. "Hey."

When Tommy stepped back, Cal more cautiously went up to Sam, who was still kneeling, and gave him a hug.

Dean was even less prepared than Sam had been when Tommy ran over and hugged _him_ , hard enough that Dean found it a little hard to breathe. Then it was Cal's turn. She whispered "thank you" before she let go.

He didn't think he'd had that many hugs in such a short span of time since he'd been old enough to learn what all the dirtiest curse words meant.

As they headed down the front walk towards the street, Dean said, "Not one word, Sam. Not. One. Word."

They walked towards the car, Dean struck with how damn peaceful the neighborhood looked, as if six monsters had never touched it. That was often the way; Dean had learned not to trust the ordinary. That little house on the corner, with the old pine trees and the lawn gnome in the yard, could hide a dark thing in the basement, waiting to shred a life.

When they reached the car, Sam stopped abruptly. "Dean," Sam said, a desperate, sharp note in his voice, as Dean popped the trunk.

He stopped, watching Sam, bracing himself.

"If you can't read my fear anymore..." Sam shifted beneath the weight of his duffel bag. "It's not because I don't need--" He swallowed, then for a second, looked like that scared nine-year-old again. "I just..."

Six months to go, and then Dean'd be gone, and Sam would be on his own.

Dean dropped his duffel into the trunk, roughly, then reached out to take Sam's bag from him.

"Yeah." Dean slammed the trunk shut. "I know."

~end

  
  


+The amazingly talented [](http://dun.livejournal.com/profile)[**dun**](http://dun.livejournal.com/) created such beautiful artwork for this. Wow. *flails*  
+A second nod to the awesome [](http://marinarusalka.livejournal.com/profile)[**marinarusalka**](http://marinarusalka.livejournal.com/) , [](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/profile)[**smilla02**](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/) and [](http://luzdeestrellas.livejournal.com/profile)[**luzdeestrellas**](http://luzdeestrellas.livejournal.com/) for their suggestions, tweaking, and hand-holding. Any errors are my fault, not theirs.  
+Also cake and scones for [](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/profile)[**pheebs1**](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/) , and to [](http://batyatoon.livejournal.com/profile)[**batyatoon**](http://batyatoon.livejournal.com/) and [](http://innie-darling.livejournal.com/profile)[**innie_darling**](http://innie-darling.livejournal.com/) who each listened patiently as I practically acted out one particular sequence with great enthusiasm -- and it never made it into the story.  
+[](http://kimonkey-7.livejournal.com/profile)[ **kimonkey_7**](http://kimonkey-7.livejournal.com/) found the link about [the insides of electronic devices](http://www.coolmagnetman.com/magindex.htm) and [](http://gnatkip.livejournal.com/profile)[**gnatkip**](http://gnatkip.livejournal.com/) reminded me about [](http://researchgrrrl.livejournal.com/profile)[**researchgrrrl**](http://researchgrrrl.livejournal.com/) 's excellent [post on EMF](http://researchgrrrl.livejournal.com/116474.html).  
+As always, I relied on [](http://killabeez.livejournal.com/profile)[**killabeez**](http://killabeez.livejournal.com/) 's [series timeline](http://seacouver.slashcity.net/killa/spn_s2_timeline.html).  
+Excerpts are from _The Sneetches and Other Stories_ by Dr. Seuss, published by Random House.  
+I really love Monsters, Inc and hate that the Andrews can't ever watch it again.  
+Also, as you might have already noticed, there's a running shout-out in here to a certain comic strip.  
+This story (and my first SPN fic, Recoil) wouldn't have happened if a certain deleted scene had been aired in the Pilot instead of shown as an extra later on. Because it made no sense to me Dean could get back to Sam's apartment building that fast, I created a reason why.

  
[Part 1](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/146485.html)|[Part 2](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/146767.html)|[Part 3](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/147060.html)


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